what our hearts used to be
by TolkienGirl
Summary: Maybe she dreamed of an ancient kingdom so that she could save a modern empire. [Go Ha Jin and the princes of Goryeo, the second time around.]
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

 _My clouded reflection eyes me_

 _like a bird of prey, the profile of night_

 _slanted against morning. I turn_

 _this way—the stone lets me go._

 _\- Yusef Komunyakaa_

DAEGU, KOREA—present day

 _i._

First comes a diagnosis. A diagnosis, and many whispers, and then blood. The blood is unavoidable; he watched it drawn slowly out with a needle, before the tests, and he will see it run wide and red again, when the news begins to creep out.

He tells the doctor he has heard enough for today, and coughs into a handkerchief behind a locked door. Mu will come and visit him as he does every Thursday. He will tell Mu first, and Mu will tell no one.

It is Taejo's own body that will betray him, graying skin and tired eyes and weakness, so much weakness. Then _she_ will know, and as soon as she knows, it is over.

 _ii._

"At this age," her mother says, "You should be worrying about getting a husband, not more education. Ha-Jin, you already have your degree."

Her father spends half the year in San Francisco, a world away. Why didn't her parents leave each other long ago? Why does her mother care so much about _marriage_ , when her only daughter has come back so miraculously, from near-death? These questions about her future feel meaningless, like they are asked by people who don't know her at all.

"I'm twenty-six, _omma_." And she leaves it at that, because she's going back to the museum.

Again.

…

It doesn't help much, seeing the ancient, painstaking sketches. They are stylized to show heaviness as wealth, and they look nothing like him.

He lived into his fifties, the texts say. That was old age, in ancient times. That was thirty years beyond the days she knew and loved him.

"You come here often, miss?"

It's the curator. The one with Choi Ji Mong's face.

"Do I know you?" her voice sounds harsh to her own ears. It sounds like she's been shouting, or like she has been silent for a long time. Maybe both. Maybe the last time she was alive, she wanted very badly to be heard, and wasn't.

He blinks, expression neutral. "I don't think so." A half-bow, very courteous. Like she is some grand patroness of the Goryeo exhibit, and not just a girl in a skirt bought two seasons ago from an off-brand shop in Seoul. "Maybe I just have one of those faces."

Ha Jin clenches her fists. _I bet you do_. "Do you work here?"

"I do not." He strokes his short beard. "I—manage acquisitions for some prominent clients."

"Any emperors?"

There's a pause. It's too significant. "Don't know any emperors these days."

She wheels on him, but the lights are dimming—the doors are closing—it's time to go home.

"Good night, miss," he says blithely, and hurries away.

One of these days, she's going to catch him.

…

Life doesn't work so simply. Three whole months go by with weekly museum trips—sometimes twice-weekly, like that will do her any good at all—and she never sees him, the astronomer of the past.

Ha Jin—or is Hae Soo? Is it ever going to be Hae Soo again, or is that just a strange and terrifying dream?—is restless. She's also probably a little crazy, if her mother is to be believed. Her father cuts his trip short. He comes home. He tells her he almost died himself, watching her lay so still and quiet, for so many months.

 _It wasn't months_ , she wants to say. _It was years…_

But there it is: the craziness. She can't tell anyone that she changed the course of history, because history cannot recognize what it might have been, only what it is.

And people are blinder still.

She has lost her one connection. Choi Ji Mong is gone. She reads the news, and it is nothing that has ever interested her, nothing she cares to understand.

Before—well, before she drowned, that first and only time, she centered her life around a man who left her.

Her mother thinks she's had her head turned by feminism, or the coma, or both. Twenty-six, and won't settle down! (Twenty-six, dead and alive again.) If only _omma_ knew, just how far she'd go for a man.

But that was hundreds of years ago.

Ha Jin actually laughs, at that.

…

Crowded with her parents around a cracked enamel table, she picks at her bibimbap and decides that maybe what she needs is to get drunk. That wouldn't be her doctor's orders, certainly—but it might do her some good. Maybe drinking will make her forget.

Maybe it will finally allow her to remember enough to do _something_.

 _iii._

"Yeon Hwa, I said, we'll be late."

"And I said, _yeot-meog-eo_."

"Is that any way to speak to your brother?"

She glances up and sees Wook's furrowed brow. His hands rest on the back of her chair. His nails are almost as well-manicured as hers are.

"I don't leave this house without a perfect face," Yeon Hwa snaps, beckoning the makeup artist to return. He'd fled at Wook's appearance. "If _Queen_ Yoo can't deal with that, I'm sure you'll make it up to her somehow. Boot-licker."

" _Aish_ , you're sour today." But Wook is smiling; he never stays severe for long. "It's important to make a good impression," he adds, all gravity and repose. "It respects our father's memory."

She narrows her eyes; these days she wonders if there is more on Wook's mind than honoring a ghost. "If you would get out of my rooms for two minutes," she suggests, "We would be there already."

This is an exaggeration, but he shrugs and saunters away. She parts her lips for the application of liner and Chanel Rouge. If So is there today, perhaps he'll notice.

Likely not. The knowledge of who she is, and who she may never be, curls her stomach.

"Hurry up," she tells the stylist, but she keeps her voice low so that Wook won't hear a hint of her changing mind.

 _iv._

It would be satisfying, Yo thinks, to press the trader's flabby throat between his fingers until it bruised, until the man was gasping for air rather than wheedling for a higher price.

He knows better, of course. He settles for words. "Do you take me for a fool?"

"Never, honored sir."

"Honored? Tell Dae-Ho he'd be better off sending an executive, not a sniveling shop-man." He plucks at a flawless lapel. "This? Is jacquard. That?" He lets the sample drop from his fingers to the floor. "That is shit. Now take your shit, and your honorifics, and get out."

The trader has barely limped through the door before Won starts up a chorus of congratulation. "That was brilliant, Yo. _Brilliant_. You skewered him! You could be a street-fighter."

"Brilliant?" Yo arches an eyebrow. That the eyebrow is the most flawless wing-shape that might ever grace a _Vanity Fair_ close-up goes without saying. He could use a _VF_ ; all the _Vogues_ are getting a little monotonous. "Save it, Won. We needed that deal."

"We did?"

Won is cloyingly slow, as always. Yo drums his fingers against his knee—also suited in jacquard, because why not go all out? (Power moves are always deliberate, and _sometimes_ observable.)

"What do you bring to a party?"

"A…bottle of scotch?"

"Exactly. What do you bring to a funeral?" He doesn't wait for what will certainly be an inane answer. "A better bottle of scotch."

"Whose funeral?" Won asks.

Yo stands up, reaches for his gleaming obsidian phone, and scans for new messages. Seven, but none urgent. He'll need another deal lined up by the end of the day, something to sweeten the pot at dinner tomorrow.

A new message blinks: it's from his mother. _We have company. Hwangbos._

He rolls his eyes—Wook's pandering is no threat, though it is transparent—and tucks his phone into his breast pocket.

"Whose funeral?" Won asks again, trailing him out.

Through a smile that is mostly teeth, Yo answers. "My father's."

SEOUL, KOREA—GANGSEO DISTRICT

 _v._

The man's tooth splinters under his knuckles, though that isn't so good for his knuckles.

"Have you had enough?" he asks, ground out.

A gurgling whimper.

"Yes, I take it." His hand hurts like a bitch, and it's raining in flat, ice-water sheets. He wants this to be over, but then, he always wants it to be over. That is the part of himself that he keeps held down, chained like a dog.

He reaches forward with his left hand and gets a firm grip on the man's collar, tight enough to bruise. "Three hijackings in two months? Someone's paying for that. I want a name."

The man wheezes, and he loosens his hold, just a little. "If they are paying," the man mumbles, breath whistling around the missing tooth, "For hired muscle, are you surprised that someone else is paying to destabilize shipments?"

"I'm not surprised," So growls. "I'm insisting. A name."

"I don't have one."

"You own the trucking company."

"I'm just a businessman."

"Who leaks routes, for a price?"

"Never!"

"You have thirty more teeth, give or take. I can keep going."

"There wasn't a name!" The man's voice ratchets up a notch of desperation. "The wire transfer came from Daegu."

"The textile capital. Where every rival would be?"

"It's not that simple." The man wrenches free from his grasp and actual grovels, hands splashing in the black puddles. "There's a line of hired operatives. They don't make deals in back alleys, they make them at galas. Tradeshows. Where everyone's talking about everything."

"I'm not leaving without a name." The pain in his hand has dulled just enough for him to start punching again, and So thinks his target knows it.

The man sputters and gasps, and then relents. "Woo Hee," he says. "The last contact I sent. Her name is Woo Hee."

NAMWON, KOREA

 _vi._

"Who is it, my love?"

The latest "love" giggles, tossing his phone from hand to hand. Baek Ah straightens the collar of his robe and frowns. This blue is mixed too dark; he wanted the frail hue of a robin's egg, and what he has is turquoise.

"He sounds handsome," the girl says, dancing her fingers along the back of his neck. "But not so handsome as you."

He plucks the phone from her hand absently, still distressed over his colors. A landscape should come alive, but gently…to smother it is a garish, ugly thing.

"Hello?"

"Answer your own damn phone." So's voice is clipped, which means he's short-tempered, which means he's probably injured.

Baek Ah forgets all shades of blue and stands quickly. "Where are you?"

"Seoul."

Baek Ah imagines him folded like a jackknife against some warehouse wall, a slight, tense shadow with blood pooling on the ground. An artist's vision is vivid, and cruel. "Do you need—"

"I didn't call you because I needed anything." This may be untrue, but Baek Ah knows better than to comment on it.

"Why were you calling, then?" He tries, gently, for humor. "You interrupted something very sweet and pleasant here."

"Spare me." Wherever So is, the coverage is bad. "I…called to tell you, I'm going back to Daegu."

Baek Ah suddenly feels much too far away. " _Geugoya_?"

"Yes. Really." There's a long pause, and then So adds, "I think my father is dying."

Baek Ah draws in a sharp breath. It seemed for many years that Wang Taejo was absolute, a stone-carved icon among _chaebols_ , someone who would never die. Who _could_ never die. Baek-Ah comes from a family without so much wealth and lineage, but he played with the Wangs as a child and has seen them grow up hardened in different ways. He wonders, off-handedly, if So found out this news in the middle of a fight.

"What happened?" Baek-Ah asks. He asks its gently; So, of course, never demands that anyone treat him with kindness, so Baek-Ah chooses for both of them. "How did you—"

"I don't know." So cuts him off, before sympathy can hang in the air too long. "I need to be certain."

And it would take that, Baek-Ah reflects, as the dial tone hums in his ear. It would take something terrible and possible, to drag Wang So back home.


	2. Chapter 2

_or he had arrived at his own conclusion_

 _and that was_

 _for him a relief even if he was separated_

 _even if his hands were frozen_

 _even if the wind knocked him down_

 _\- Gerald Stern_

DAEGU, KOREA – SEO DISTRICT

 _i._

Weaving through a crowded train station is no easy task, especially for someone who's been out of the metropolitan rush for a long time. Woo Hee ducks and bobs, one slim travel-bag tight under her arm. She has a change of clothes and a few hundred thousand _won_ , which will cover a night's stay. The address for the hotel is crumpled in her hand. The contact will meet her there.

 _Chae Ryung_. _Chae Ryung_. That was the only name she'd been given, and she turns it over in her mind to pass the time. Calm and focus are the only things that will serve her, but the narrow lines concealed under her sleeve reveal that Woo Hee has never been an expert at calm.

Only at precision.

She turns a corner and collides against another traveler. It's no fault of hers, no lack of precision—this _mi-chin-nom_ was completely oblivious to where he was going. She keeps an iron grip on her luggage and glares stormily at him, biting back the sharp words on her tongue.

"I'm sorry," he says, formally. Formally? She's surprised. Her clothes are dirt-cheap and her eye makeup is several layers too heavy. She looks like a _geol-le-nyeon_. That's the point.

As for this crazy bastard—he's anything but cheap. He's wearing a loose, flowing jacket over a silk shirt patterned with shadowy flowers, and there are multiple rings on his graceful fingers. His hair is smooth over his brow, and his skin is—well, it's flawless.

He's beautiful.

Woo Hee is not here to gawk, or to make eyes, or whatever she has found herself doing in a very short span of time. She's come to Daegu for a particular—and particularly dangerous—mission.

"Thanks," she says, almost gruffly, and would push past him.

But one of those elegant hands catches her wrist and holds her fast. "Buy you a drink for your troubles?" He has no right to such a warm smile. No right at all. "It's a cold day."

She frees her wrist instead of leaning into his touch. "I'm in a hurry."

That smile again. "I can see _that_." He releases her. "May we meet again." And then he actually sketches a little bow, lowers his expertly coiffed head a couple inches, making Woo Hee's traitorous heart flutter.

She sprints off without looking back.

DAEGU, KOREA – JUNG DISTRICT

 _ii._

One eggshell-thin teacup slides off the tray and shatters in a sparkle of flaky shards.

Silence falls like snow, broken only by the sound of the maid's terrified breathing.

Sinmyeongsun Yoo, Wang Yoo by marriage, smiles.

"That cup," she says, in a tone as thin and sharp as the fractured porcelain, "Was from a two-hundred year-old set, gifted to me by my grandmother."

"Mrs. Wang," the maid whispers. "Please…I am so—"

Yoo stoops. Her white linen dress remains, somehow, uncreased when she straightens her spine. The largest fragment of the teacup is in her hand.

The ladies around her—gathered for an informal book-group, as they did, twice-monthly, at the Wang's palatial penthouse home—collectively gasp.

Blood drips from the meticulous, deliberate slice across the flesh of her oval palm. Her face hasn't changed at all, not even a flinch or twitch of muscle. She drops the shard, lifts one stilettoed foot to cross the wreckage, and holds the wound at the maid's eye-level.

"The whole set," Yoo explains gently, "Will have to be packed away. Unusable." She presses her hand against the maid's face, dragging a wet red smear across nose and lips and chin, and finally, down to stain the pale uniform blouse.

The younger woman whimpers, but does not dare to move.

"Clear away this mess," Yoo says. "And call a doctor."

 _iii._

Baek Ah takes one step inside the door and thunders, "Eun! Get down here!"

The place reeks of sweat and spicy noodles and beer. Gingerly, Baek Ah sets down his polished leather luggage in the entryway and skirts around a heap of empty food cartons.

Footsteps sound on the stairs. In peacetime—peacetime being when Eun and his brother-in-arms, Wang Jung, are kept firmly under control—the loft apartment is a luxurious haven. The open floor plan allows for lounging and parties, centered around the gem of _chaebol_ heir hangouts: an enormous indoor pool sunk in the middle of the floor and ringed with three different kinds of marble in graduated steps. The winding staircase that curves above the ever-bubbling fountain leads to the sleeping quarters, which are arranged under a constellation of skylights.

Baek Ah considers it his second home.

At the moment, he's considering tearing the whole thing down.

" _Aish_ ," he mutters, kicking at a rumpled towel. "You good-for-nothing little…"

" _Hyung_!"

This is Baek Ah's trouble: his heart is easily melted. All it takes is the sight of the ultimate culprit, Eun, tumbling downstairs, and…he's lost all his anger. Most of it, anyway.

He submits to Eun's fierce hug and tries to remember to scold. "You call me _hyung_ as you welcome me to a place in this state?"

Eun glances ruefully behind him. "Ah…OK. You came at a bad time. No offense!" he adds, skipping out of the way of Baek Ah's reprimanding backhand. "Jung and I had a few visitors last night."

"Jung lives here now?"

"No." Eun rolls his eyes. "Like the Mother Dragon would ever allow that. He just…stays, from time to time. We didn't know you were coming back!"

It _has_ been a long time since Baek Ah was in Daegu. As a child, he expected to pick up where his father (and more to the point, though less publicly, his mother) left off. They were the chief design team for Wang-Hwangbo International Textiles, and not a day has gone by since his father's death that Baek Ah hasn't felt that larger hand guiding his pen and paints.

Mother still lives, of course. But she hated the city, and the business, and the Wangs most of all, and so she lives in the countryside now, and does not answer her phone.

Lately, it has felt like Baek Ah is following in her footsteps. Tucking himself away into mountain villas. Surrounding himself with comforts. Mother's comforts take the form of exotic teas and silk-screen embroidery; Baek Ah prefers more…vivacious entertainment, but the fact remains: he has been gone.

And he isn't quite ready to tell Eun why he's come back again.

"Call the housekeeper," he says. "I'm not going to live in a sty."

Eun misses the chiding tone by a mile and settles on the kernel of a promise. "You're staying!"

"Yes. I'm staying."

At least for as long as So needs him. And Baek Ah has a feeling—an artist's haunted predilection of the future—that the need may be great.

 _iv._

"Miss, the exhibits are closed today. Private event."

Ha Jin shakes her head. "What—I just—" The notebook in her hand seems like the simplest excuse. "Student project."

"Private event." The guard is already getting impatient. Behind him, delivery workers are carting in bolts of what look like…textiles?

A strange prickle runs along Ha Jin's spine. She cranes her neck to get a better look, and asks, in a less insistent tone, "What kind of event?"

The guard glares. "Who are you, to get to know?"

She waves the notebook again. "I just need something to tell my teacher, _ahjussi_."

The guard sucks at his teeth, lips poking outward. "Textiles," he says. "It's a tradeshow for the new season."

 _"I…manage acquisitions for some prominent clients…_ "

"Oh!" she squeaks, because a little touch of _aegyo_ won't hurt. She has the face for it, the wide, perpetually child-like eyes and rosebud mouth. It's strange to wear a face that looks so young, when Ha Jin feels anything but. "That's perfect! I'm a design major. Can you tell me who's featured?"

The guard is charmed enough. "Wang-Hwangbo International," he says, a little puffed up, glad to represent his museum. "Surely you've heard of them."

…

She has.

…

At home, Ha Jin's heart beats too fast. The doctor has cleared her for any heart-related issues, but sometimes she thinks about how it killed her last time, the perpetual pulse and the fear and the love, all things that seem tied together with this fickle lump of flesh in her chest. She sits on the edge of her bed, listening to her mother rattling around in the kitchen, the rise and fall of her father's voice as he discusses the weather.

She needs to find her own place to live.

She needs to find her way into the museum tonight.

Ha Jin swallows down something too hopeful to be a sob.

She has no idea what she will find there.

 _v._

"My love. Are you sure you don't want rest?"

Her hand is ice-cold on Taejo's forehead. Her left hand; the right is neatly bandaged across the palm.

"You're hurt," he says, avoiding her question. It seems safer, to avoid that question.

Yoo's eyes bore into him, sloe-black. She's never had a soft gaze, not even when he was young and she was younger, when she whispered lovely nothings to him in gardens atop skyscrapers, and won enough of his heart to keep all of him. "It is just a scratch," she says. "I'll wear gloves tonight."

He sits up. He had woken from a restless nap to find her standing over him. "I'll be ready in half an hour," he promises. He told Mu he would be there, and he never breaks his word to Mu.

 _vi._

"Call for you, Mr. Wang."

Yo stretches. There is still an hour before the gathering—which is at a museum, of all places, because his father has no sense of modernity—and he is weighing carefully the risk of having a third drink. He cannot afford to have dulled senses tonight, or any night.

Won, of course, is not allowed to drink at all. He is loose-lipped when he drinks, and even Won holds too many secrets these days for such carelessness.

"I'll take the call," he says, and waits for the transfer. It's probably IMG, offering him the Givenchy winter campaign for Southeast Asia. He's been waiting for that ask, though he probably won't take the deal. Time to change careers, in a manner of speaking.

"Mr. Wang."

"Has the agent arrived?"

"Yes. She arrived in Seo-gu a few hours ago."

"Excellent. Anything else?"

The man on the other end of the line hesitates. Yo snaps to attention. Reluctance is never a good thing. "Tell me," he orders.

"Your brother was seen in Daegu today."

"Jung?" Yo asks. It's a venomous pleasantry, and a last line of defense. He knows the man doesn't mean Jung.

"Wang So."

Yo bites the inside of his cheek until it bleeds.

 _vii._

The sky is clear when So arrives in Daegu. His right hand is still smarting from last night's altercation, but the pain is the least of his concerns today.

He spent the train-ride facing the window. Of course, this did not stop the round-faced schoolboys across the aisle from whispering about his face, but So has had twenty years to hear every manner of commentary, and shuffles that to the lowest level of concern as well.

His father, after all, is dying.

Nobody took the trouble to tell him this, including the man himself. Mu likely would have, in time, but Mu is overly cautious.

Perhaps So should have waited to be called. That would be the dog in him, after all. Crawling on all fours for the scraps of being needed. He picks at the bandage wrapped around his fingers and frowns.

Whoever is behind the sabotage of Wang-Hwangbo's shipments is likely close to the heart of the company. In his own mind, there's no need for veiled suspicions.

His money is already on Yo.

Yo has the most to gain by destabilizing the fragile line of succession. Yo must have sensed, as So actually knows, that Mu would just as soon not take on the family legacy.

If Mu is halfway convinced, turning the shareholders against him will topple him inexorably. Shareholders are not overly fond of stolen shipments and money trickling away like water.

Wook would urge caution, in pursuing this theoretical line of inquiry, and So should probably listen to him. Wook is closer to true brotherhood with So and Mu than their brothers by blood, though Wook is the son of their father's late partner. Hwangbo Ji Hyuk was a kindly man, more openly affectionate than Taejo.

Everyone, of course, is more openly affectionate than Madame Yoo.

So shuts his eyes; he doesn't want to think about his mother any sooner than he has to.

When he gets off the train, he hears a camera shutter snap somewhere to his right. Life has taught him to be suspicious.

It has also taught him to be resigned.

 _viii._

Ha Jin waits until 7:30, when her parents have settled down to watch reruns of _The Great Doctor_ , and slips outside. She has on her nicest dress, which hangs a little loose on her frame, and a pair of heels almost too high to walk in. With her hair slicked back and her best makeup skills put to use (and oh, there is one for irony), she hopes she can pass for a plus-one of some lesser tradesman.

The front entrance of the museum is ablaze with light. Garment trunks are still being unloaded and carried through the service entrance, while businessmen filter through the main doors. The women who lean against their arms are as sleek and fair as flowers.

Ha Jin remembers Princess Yeon Hwa, and bile rises in her throat.

(She doesn't know what she will find here.)

The service entrance seems like her best bet. She passes a row of trays, one of which is laden with champagne flutes, and snatches one up.

Props, remember? Whether it's a notebook, or a hastily stirred-up foundation palette, she's always been good with props.

(She misses him. She misses him so much.)

She walks a little tipsily, which isn't hard in these damn shoes, and melts into the crowds of waiters.

"Miss!" one calls, right on cue. "Miss, are you lost?"

"Sorry," she says, as blasé as she can manage. "I-" She waves her wine glass. "Can you help?"

"Through there," he says. He looks young, young enough to be Eun's age. Ha Jin's heart twists in her chest. She follows his gesture to the door marked _Goryeo Gallery_ , steps through, out into a blur of glamour-

-and comes face to face with Wook.


	3. Chapter 3

_Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,_

 _Possessed by what we no more possessed._

 _Something we were withholding made us weak_

 _Until we found out that it was ourselves._

 _\- Robert Frost_

DAEGU, KOREA – JUNG DISTRICT

 _i._

Centuries ago, when she was dying, she thought of Wook.

Not with any love, nor, at last, any confusion—only some extension of the grief and weariness that had overcome every other waking moment since she left the palace, and maybe even before that.

It wasn't her world, no matter how many people she came to love there. She was a fighter at first; then the fight was beaten out of her. She watched death and hatred and the hatred of death.

She was afraid, there, and some might say that made her a coward.

Perhaps she would have believed it herself, if she hadn't known Wook, and all the blood that a coward could spill.

…

Ha Jin freezes, hand crumpling her skirt as though his very presence is a stab wound. He looks as handsome as ever, tousled hair and pristine suit and glittering cufflinks.

He leaves her ice-cold.

Ghosts are not known for comfort; this ghost leaves her with something far less.

"Excuse me," he says, eyes blank. No recognition, thank heaven. Ha Jin does not know what she would do if it was Wook who remembered.

Of course—

—that means—

What if _So_ doesn't remember?

Her heart clenches like a fist.

Wook has paused mid-step, and is considering her. "You look a little lost," he observes, charm itself. Those hooded eyes have lost none of their appearance of tenderness.

"Maybe a little." Ha Jin forces herself to smile. Her dress is nowhere near nice enough, she knows. Not for a textile exhibition. Trapped in the same world as her greatest hopes and fears, she wishes that she could have had more time to plan. "Would you show me?"

He offers her his arm.

This is not Goryeo, and Ha Jin is not a child. Maybe she is not Hae Soo.

But she slips her arm through his, and walks out into the crowd.

"Tell me when you see your people," Wook purrs, near her ear. He is so…considerate. She doesn't trust it for a moment. Did she mistake the look in his eyes for ignorance? Maybe he does remember, or some animal sense within him knows enough to keep her close. She tries not to tremble beside him.

She tries not to think of what this means, that he is here, in this world, in this time, under the name of _Wang_.

Goryeo wasn't a dream.

Nor, apparently, was it an ending.

 _ii._

"Who is that girl?"

"What girl? I only have eyes for you."

Yeon Hwa knows better than to believe a word out of Yo's mouth, and she raps his beringed knuckles with her YSL clutch. " _Hajima._ The girl with my brother."

Yo's gaze slides lazily to the cheaply dressed, slip-thin _whore_ who is arm-in-arm with Wook. He shrugs. "Paid company."

" _Ya_!" She's already hit him once, she has to maintain her dignity. She daggers him with a glance instead. "Wook would never."

"Ah yes." Yo smiles the maddening smile of someone who is fully aware of how handsome he is. Ever since he started modeling, he's outlined his eyes in a fine ribbon of kohl. It makes him look otherworldly, and every bit as dangerous as Yeon Hwa knows him to be. "Wook is a man without vice."

Yeon Hwa doesn't believe that. Nobody is perfect; her brother has always been too careful, too deliberate, to enter fully into anyone else's suffering. That _is_ a vice, but not one that she will divulge to Yo. The Wang brothers are prone to very different sins.

Sins, she thinks, with a speculative look at Yo's smirking lips, of passion.

"I'll find out myself," she hisses, and stalks away. Damn it all, why does So never come to these things? He's been away on business in Seoul ever since he was in his late teens.

And before that…

Yeon Hwa isn't blind. She's grown up practically side-by-side with this ruling family, she has seen every direction in which its power stretches.

The Hwangbo name comes second. Nights like tonight remind her of that.

Fittingly, she catches sight of Mrs. Wang at that very moment. Yoo—Yeon Hwa refers to her by her given name mentally, a safe internal show of disrespect—looks as young and inhuman as ever. She has soft, delicate features and hair untouched by frost, and she is the most terrifying person Yeon Hwa has ever met.

(Yeon Hwa's own mother is gracious and quiet, never caring much about her husband's share in Wang-Hwangbo, but always caring about her children's futures.)

 _No wonder So isn't here. Why would he want to be?_

She steels her resolve and calls her brother's name. He turns, not letting go of his unknown escort's arm.

"Yeon Hwa. Do you know…"

"Ha Jin," the girl supplies. She's terribly pale. Not a flirt after all, but Yeon Hwa doesn't like her any better.

"I do not," Yeon Hwa says coldly, still speaking to her brother. "I thought this was a private event."

Wook looks more disappointed than embarrassed. It's a trick of his, conveying a perspective on others' feelings before he expresses his own. "Play nice, sister."

A chill of…memory, suspended halfway between regret and resolve settles over Yeon Hwa. She lifts the corners of her lips in a smile. "Very well. Enjoy your time here, Ha Jin." It is still a threat, of sorts, but pleasanter than she could have been.

She goes in search of another drink.

 _iii._

There's a figure huddled on the front steps of the Nam's house, and Jung halts.

"Who's there?"

"It's me," Eun says, unfolding himself from his dejected heap. " _Aigo_ , my life is _over_."

"What now?" Jung rubs his jaw, hoping that the hit he took in the ring today won't bruise. Mother is already so severe on his beloved boxing; he doesn't need to present a marked-up face as further evidence of its unsuitability.

"What now? You don't _know_?"

Jung rarely knows anything. That's the benefit of being the youngest, favorite son. "I only know that you are skulking like a dog when we could be drinking. Eating. Anything, really."

" _Heol_! You really don't know." Eun is shaking his head. "So has come back! Remember So? Your older brother, the gangster? Who's killed, oh, I don't know, fifty men at least?"

"So hasn't killed anyone," Jung says, though he's far from certain. "But—shit. Are you sure?"

"Baek Ah has invited him to stay here," Eun says gloomily. "Baek Ah's come back too, not that we get to have any fun with him." He frowns dramatically. Eun does everything dramatically. "I'm surprised you didn't hear about it from Yo. Weren't you at the party?"

Jung scratches his neck, a little sheepish. "No. I…had a thing."

"A fight."

Eun knows him too well. Jung nods. "A fight."

"Did you win?"

" _Aish_!" Eun really is a disloyal little bastard. "Don't you have any faith in your _hyung_?"

"You're not my _hyung_ ," Eun grumbles. "We're practically the same age. Alright, what are we going to do about So? I am not staying in the same house as him, and it's _my_ goddamn house!"

"Then," says a low, calm voice behind them, "Sleep on the street."

Jung and Eun spin round like tops.

So always looks the same to Jung. Stone-faced, panther-lean, dressed in black. In the half-darkness, it's harder to see his scar—a white rivulet that runs from the hollow of his eye to the edge of his cheekbone.

Jung has never heard the whole story.

"So," Eun chokes.

"Eun," So echoes. It's mocking—it must be, So is related to Yo and nobody mocks like Yo—but with So, it's always difficult to tell. He could describe the weather and his plans to murder someone in the same exact tone. "I'll toss out a blanket for you."

He doesn't speak to Jung. He turns his back and climbs the steps, two at a time, up the pathway to the front door. When it closes behind him, Eun finally regains his power to speak.

"Whew. We survived that."

Jung swallows. It's been three years at least since he saw his brother. It didn't even merit him a greeting.

He realizes, belatedly, that he didn't offer one either.

"Come," he says to Eun. "Let's go drinking."

 _iv._

"Your contributions are impressive."

Yo flattens his palm over his heart. "Thank you, father. I want to see our company flourish."

"No need for such formality," Taejo answers, as though he has ever demanded anything other than formality from all his sons but Mu. "Your help does not go unnoticed."

 _But it does go unappreciated_. Yo smiles. "Truly, I am glad."

He feels his mother's approval radiate—not warmly, never _warmly_ —but powerfully. She cuts like a blade and she has always taught Yo to cut with her. Sometimes, traitorously, he thinks that it was a choice between becoming the knife's edge and being shipped off to the Kang boarding school.

Not that So had learned his lesson; he keeps turning up like a bad coin.

Yo would rather not think of So tonight, but he has to. The tactile displays of his ruthlessly executed business deals were for his father; the message is for his mother. When his father totters off to find a comfortable seat, he turns to her.

"So has come back," he says. Might as well get to the point, and do it in the public eye, so that she won't rake her nails across his face in what will likely be her ensuing rage.

Yo has a higher-than-most (higher than So's) success rate of avoiding his mother's hands, but even so, it never hurts to be cautious.

Yoo turns a shade whiter, her gloved fingers tightening around a crystal champagne class. "To hell with him," she whispers harshly. "Will he never let me alone?"

Yo smiles thinly, ruefully. "It would seem not."

 _v._

Hating Jung is never as easy as he wants it to be.

So switches on the lights, drops his bags on the tiled floor and scans the room for anything amiss. Threat assessment is a rather permanent character trait.

Baek Ah had promised it would be no inconvenience to host him indefinitely at the Nam home, though Eun's protests are a keen reminder of how tenuous his welcome is…anywhere.

And he hasn't even tried to go home yet.

He drags his teeth along his lower lip. Yo almost certainly knows that he's here, which means his mother knows. Jung is the last in the loop always, because Jung is a child in a barely grown body, and Jung is going to outlast them all without even trying.

So scrapes a hand through his hair, which has grown long enough in front to half-cover his disfigurement, and sighs. He can't rest, not yet. Mu is waiting for him. He contacted So from a burner phone, told him he'd heard that So was coming, and asked that he meet him as soon as he arrived from Seoul.

Well, So has arrived.

He washes his face, but waits until he has gone back outside to light a cigarette out of courtesy to Baek Ah's home. Jung and Eun are long gone, the rascals.

So turns his mind to other things.

The cigarette is a stub by the time he reaches Mu's. It's a long walk, longer than he remembered. He grinds the ash under his heel and taps three times at the back door.

Ji Mong opens it.

"So!" Ji Mong's face lights up. As ever, he's the only one who's actually glad to see So. Time and trouble never change that. "Come in, come in. Mu's just opening up a bottle of cognac."

Come to think of it, So could use a drink—though he doesn't understand what Mu has against good old-fashioned soju.

He slips off his shoes and pads into Mu's spacious common room. Mu is surrounded by books and ledgers, and his favorite soft rice cakes. These are all familiar things, and something in So's chest aches.

"You look well," Mu greets him, which is a kindly fabrication at best. So looks like shit, and everyone knows it or will know it. He'll take the kindness for now, though. The first visit to his mother and elder full brother will dispel any such pleasantries.

"You didn't tell me he was sick."

"It wasn't mine to tell."

"Or mine to know?" It comes out more bitterly than So means it too. He sits down opposite Mu and reaches for an amber-filled glass. "I'm sorry. I only…"

"No need to apologize," Mu assures him, and Ji Mong bobs his head encouragingly. "Honestly, So, I was asking him for ages, to speak with you. To ask you to return."

" _Wae_? What possible use could I be?"

Mu and Ji Mong exchange a weighted glance. They are among the only people So trusts, but that doesn't make him any less wary.

"Father will not continue to lead the company," Mu says slowly. "The announcement comes soon, and then…"

"He appoints a successor," So finishes. "You."

Mu clears his throat. "That is his wish, yes."

"But not yours?" So racks his brain. Who else could do it? Not Yo, if they can help it. Wook has never sought such notoriety. Baek Ah is too far removed…

"No," Mu is saying. "Not my wish. I want it to be you."


	4. Chapter 4

_You're in a car with a beautiful boy,_

 _and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and_

 _you're trying to_

 _choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he_

 _reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist,_

 _and you feel_

 _your heart taking root in your body,_

 _like you've discovered something_

 _you don't even have a name for_

\- Richard Siken

 _i._

Ha Jin has no plan. She escapes the museum gallery at last, still burning under Yeon Hwa's stare. Yeon Hwa didn't know her. None of them know her. None of them remember.

Ha Jin has no plan, and she leaves before the erstwhile Queen Yoo sees her. She limps along the pavement with tears beginning to bubble up and over. She swipes at her wet cheeks.

Who can explain this? They are all gathered in perfect preservation…Wook as inscrutable as ever, Yeon Hwa as haughty, all the rest as rich.

And So is nowhere to be seen.

If she dreamed it, how did she get it so right?

If she did visit Goryeo, how are all of them here?

She needs to find Ji Mong again, more urgently than ever. Not because he will tell her who does and who does not exist—she has answered that question for herself.

No, she needs Ji Mong because Ji Mong may be able to answer her questions on reincarnation.

They seem to be the only two who knowingly walk through time.

She wonders how to find Baek Ah. Because he must be real too, mustn't he? Baek Ah…please God, Eun too, and Jung…all the ones who loved her simply and forever, or at least as long as forever lasted for them.

"Miss—are you alright?"

Ha Jin blinks away her tears. This voice, too, is familiar, but she doesn't place it until she sees the speaker.

A waitress, hair piled high atop her head in a springy knot.

 _Chae Ryung_.

Many thoughts collide in Ha Jin's mind. The first is that Won was nowhere to be seen at the party, though she caught a glimpse of Yo—

—and the second is the memory of how Chae Ryung betrayed her, and paid a price higher than any Hae Soo would have set.

She has trained herself not to be shocked. The numbness helps, with that. "I…" _Think fast, Ha Jin. You threw yourself into this, and there will be no one else to get you back out_. "I was supposed to meet my boyfriend." She sighs dramatically, channeling a little of Yeon Hwa's loftiness as best she can. "And he didn't show."

"At that party?" Chae Ryung asks, nodding in the direction of the glowing museum lights. "Seems…fancy."

Chae Ryung is wearing fire engine red lipstick, very dressy for a waitress. Ha Jin suspects that Chae Ryung knows more of the party than she lets on.

"Yes." Another sigh. And now, the gamble. "I decided I'd just meet him at his house, but I always get so mixed up…curse you, Baek Ah!"

Chae Ryung takes the bait. "Baek Ah? Oh, he…he's a regular at the coffee shop where I work." She sketches an arc with her hand as if she's holding a paintbrush. "Likes to draw?"

"Yes." Ha Jin dabs at her cheek. As with Wook, it's hard to tell if Chae Ryung is playing some sort of game, or if there really is a conflict in her heart, after all this time.

Maybe she and Wook and Yeon Hwa can feel the pull of time's magnet, whether they remember anything or not.

"He lives a few miles from here. Let me call you a taxi, _unni_."

If Ha Jin shuts her eyes, she will see Chae Ryung, misshapen and bleeding and gone. She does not shut her eyes. " _Gomabseubnida_ ," she says. "Thank you."

 _ii._

He leaves Mu's house with a heat like fever rising in his blood. He hasn't seen his father yet; he's never really had his father's blessing.

It isn't his father whom he goes to visit now.

Years don't change her habits. She hosts many meetings and opportunities for social prostration with the other _chaebol_ wives, none of whom dare to cross her.

But every night—late into the night—she takes tea (and liquor) alone in her room, and reads.

So is not much of a reader. Kang boarding school couldn't beat it into him—not for lack of effort. It's Yo who inherited her intellectual hunger. Yo, like So, has to try to be perfect in her eyes.

Yo, unlike So, succeeds.

He picks the lock, which is reckless, but the pounding in his head won't let him think straight.

So slips past the entrance to the kitchen, where the stainless steel clatter is already in full swing for tomorrow's breakfast and any American "brunches" that the Wang household sees fit to hold for its foreign visitors.

There is a back stair to her elaborate chambers. So takes it.

He feels eager, like he always does, like this time will change anything.

He raps his bruised knuckles on her door and waits until one of the staff opens it. The girl blanches when she sees him, but So stares her into silence.

"Who _is_ it?" rings an impatient voice he knows too well, and his mother comes into view.

She goes paler, too, but not like the maid. No—Yoo's face hardens like white marble, and So has to check the urge to drop to his knees and beg.

There will, he thinks bitterly, be plenty of time for begging.

"What are you doing here?" she hisses, when she has dismissed the maid with a sharp gesture.

He's still in his travel clothes, dark jeans and low boots and a leather jacket with blood ground into the cuffs. He feels about five years old.

"I've come home," So offers humbly.

"You have no home here," she says coldly. "You're a man now. A twisted one, yes, but a man. Your home is the streets of Seoul, or Incheon. Not Daegu."

"I'm not asking permission." He hooks his thumbs in his pockets, as if bracing himself. "I know that Father is dying."

It is a gamble. Not one that Mu, probably, would want him to make.

But Yoo's face doesn't flicker with surprise and So knows he's only telling her what she already knows.

Already knows, and has no doubt been using to her own ends.

"So you came back to assert your usefulness to me in this troubling time?" His mother lifts her eyebrows. "Where are your gifts? You always bring some _pyemul_." She scoffs. "Something to soften the blow of your visit."

"A storm's coming," So tells her. His bruises seem to have spread from his fingers to his whole body over the course of a few moments. "I think it is likely your storm." He raises his eyes to hers again. He had let his gaze slip to the ground. "And I am your son."

The corner of her lip curls; a sneer, not a smile. "Hardly," she says. "Now, get out."

 _iii._

"Come away from the window! Your nose will get cold."

Kiha does not listen. His hands are pressed against the glass, too, and Min Seo sighs. No matter how many times she reminds him not to get his hopes up, he doesn't listen.

Then again, he's only four.

She turns back to the stove, where a late pot of tea is boiling. Their apartment is small and tidy. It could be larger, if she took all the money Kiha's father offers her.

It could be much smaller, if his father had shunned them when everyone else did.

Still, nothing is perfect.

"Kiha." She sighs. "I told you. It's past your bedtime. _Appa_ isn't coming tonight."

 _iv._

He can't stop thinking about the girl. Two minutes at a train station, and apparently Baek Ah, long the unsinkable ladies' man, is weighed down.

He'll have to dispatch his spies and find the girl with the stony glare in Daegu.

He is, after all, a believer in fate.

He's also a believer that Jung and Eun are wily bastards who will do their best to get out of anything. Here he is, at yet another gala for Wang-Hwangbo, and his potential socialization prospects are Yo, who despises him, and Wook, who…

Well. Baek Ah's relationship with Wook, ever since Wook's girlfriend Myung Hee died two years ago, is fraught.

Baek Ah, of course, was the only one who knew that Wook was cheating on her before she even got the diagnosis.

No, he has nothing to say to Wook tonight. Wook has a flawless reputation and Baek Ah has never told his secret, even though it burns in the space between his ribs every time he remembers it. Strange, that So is such an outcast but is undyingly loyal, while Wook is welcomed and trusted by all.

Baek Ah sips at his drink, and tries to forget Myung Hee and the girl at the train station, two bright and different stars in a constellation of complications. He needs someone easy to flirt with tonight, someone to take his mind off things.

That's the trick to being a ladies' man, after all.

 _v._

The door of the coatroom is barely ajar, but Chae Ryung pulls away from Won to stare through the gap.

He hums with irritation.

"Is Baek Ah here?"

"Yes, of course he's here. Why, do you want to have us change places?"

"Strange," Chae Ryung murmurs.

"What is?" Won asks, stroking her hair as one might stroke a dog. "That one so handsome as I would love you?"

"No." She is absent-minded, and she forgets to praise him. "I saw a girl outside. She was looking for Baek Ah, and she said he wasn't here…I directed her to his house."

"Baek Ah always has a girl at his house." Won purses his lips. "What of it?"

Chae Ryung shakes her head, and cuddles up against him again, amid the coats. "Nothing. Just—a feeling. I don't know."

 _vi._

Baek Ah's house is a modern structure, all clean lines and soft, cool shades, even when seen at night.

He is an artist in this world too. Ha Jin is comforted by that. She slips off her heels so that she can approach on silent feet. The front door is, incredibly, unlocked.

She almost turns back. Is she delusional? Does she have any right to meddle in the lives of those who know nothing about her?

 _I had a child there._

We _had a child._

It is enough.

Ha Jin opens the door.

The sound of running water filters into the hallway. Ha Jin follows the sound along a tiled parquet floor, until the hall opens up into a room that stretches up to the second story, ringed by an elaborate loft railing. In the center of the room is a pool, endlessly rippled by a fountain.

Her chest pinches with longing.

And then, a splash.

He rises out of the water, skin glistening, a slash of hair plastered across his face. When he runs his fingers through it, smoothing it away from his forehead, the scar on his face is exactly the same.

Ha Jin stops breathing.

What happens next happens quickly. He sees her, barefoot on the tiles in her ill-fitting red dress, and he hoists himself out of the pool with lethal efficiency to tower over her, eyes flashing.

She wants—

Well, there are many things she wants. She wants to raise her lips to his and breathe his name into his mouth. She wants to trace the familiar map of scars across his shoulders and chest, scars she has kissed, and tell him that she isn't going to die, not this time, not if she can help it.

She wants to remind him that he used to be a king, or that in some eternal way, he still could be.

Ha Jin knows that she can do none of this.

"Who are you?" he growls. It reminds her of how he was at the beginning and at the end, half threat, and half the pain of a broken bone.

Before Goryeo, she never thought of herself as clever. She was skilled as a makeup artist, and her exams were never anything to be ashamed about, but she wasn't brilliant.

In Goryeo, she began as a child. Foolish and brave.

Now, she has to take a different tack.

A name hurls itself at her out of the depths of a past. Ha Jin risks it all, and says, as calmly as a person can who would sooner be sobbing, "Park Soo-kyung sent me."

She prays that So will recognize the name of the old general.

Mercifully, he does. He takes a step back, a muscle jumping in his neck—still in attack mode, but waiting to learn more. "Is that true?"

"How else would I know where to find you?" Ha Jin flattens her hands against her thighs. "You need eyes on the inside. I'm just here to help."

"I could call him right now and test this story," So tells her, punctuating his words with a jab of his finger. But he's only wearing sodden shorts; he doesn't have his phone.

Ha Jin forces her shoulders to lift in a shrug. "Go ahead. But you need all the help you can get, so you might as well take mine."

"And you know this—how?"

 _Because I know you, because I used to watch you sleep, because I love you, I love you—_ "Because that's what I was told. Am I wrong? Are your brothers not vying for the crown? Of the business, I mean."

So paces like a watchful cat, his eyes never leaving her. She knows that somewhere in his heart he must want to trust her. He always did, back then. From almost the first moment they met.

"Come back tomorrow," he says, so coldly that her heart almost falters. "We'll talk then."

He isn't well. His face is drawn tight with misery. She wonders if he's been with his mother. Only his closest blood could hurt him like that.

His closest blood, and her.

"Please," she says, imbuing it with every touch of gentleness that ever nearly saved him, "I don't have anywhere else to stay."


	5. Chapter 5

_They too know all too well that some cracks were built just for us to fall through._

 _We live in a world that tries to steal spirits each day; they steal ours by taking us away._

 _\- Tanaya Winder_

 _i._

Baek Ah finds So with his back turned, dressed like he's ready for a fight. His hands are deep in the pockets of a leather jacket that Baek Ah can tell has seen better days.

"You're here," Baek Ah says softly, joining So by the wide window that looks out into the yard. "I didn't know that you would be coming until tomorrow."

So's hair has wet, but it hasn't been raining. Baek Ah casts a glance over his shoulder, where the pool bubbles and churns.

"It's already begun," So says, hoarsely. His face is reflected as a pale twist in the dark glass. He is shorter by half a head than Baek Ah, but he has always felt so much older, so much greater, like someone capable of plucking a knife from between his own ribs and using it to kill.

"What has begun?" Baek Ah asks carefully. And just like that, he realizes that they are not alone in the room.

The girl is a slip of a thing, in a red dress that is passé and too large in the shoulders. She opens her mouth when she sees Baek Ah, a look like longing.

So, without turning towards her, explains. "She says she knows Park Soo-kyung."

Soo-kyung is a hardboiled police detective who was forced to retire when a bullet shattered part of his jaw. His Seoul department was too image-conscious to have a lead detective who struggled to speak, and so they'd saddled him with a heavy pension and effectively shown him his way out.

Baek Ah knows all of this because he knows So. When So was kicked out of the Kang boarding school for the last time, his mother had refused to take him back. The eponymous Kangs hadn't wanted him anymore either. Somehow, the grizzled Soo-kyung had come to know him and had welcomed So into his home.

The Wang-Hwangbo complex is aware of this, though it is communicated only by whispers. Baek Ah is also aware that Soo-kyung taught So how to fight.

Baek Ah reads people. It's part of being an artist. He can tell, at least, the beginning of someone's story—even if he doesn't always guess the end.

Right now, he doesn't think that this girl in the red dress looks anything like a threat.

"Hello," he says gently. He offers her a hand to take it. "I am Baek Ah."

"She says she has to stay here."

"Please," the girl adds. She is staring at the back of So's tense shoulders like she is going to die.

"Did you threaten her?" Baek Ah asks.

"No." One of those shoulders lifts. "Well, not a lot."

"I'm not afraid of him," the girl says, which makes So go stiff. "I truly am here to help. I know that the family…business is in trouble. Soo-kyung would have sent—" she pauses, and Baek Ah thinks, _aha, a gambler_ , but the impression is fleeting—"Soon Deok, his own daughter, if he thought she would not be recognized."

"What use is a woman?" So wheels around, eyes flashing. "Whatever you think you know—"

"That," she answers quietly. "A woman is useful because she is always underestimated. Believe me, I do not always trust myself."

" _Aish_ ," So breathes out, and turns back to the window.

Baek Ah has no idea what is going on. When this is true, he finds it wisest to follow his heart. "What is your name?"

"Go Ha Jin." She is in her stocking feet. Baek Ah wonders if she is cold; evening sets in with a chill, here. "I…was at the tradeshow tonight. You would do well to watch Won's moves."

That gets a response from So. "Kim Won?"

"Y-es."

"What about him?" He has turned again and stalks towards her, eyes narrowed. Baek Ah stems an urge to step in between them.

"He's a greater threat than you think." Ha Jin is doing, by Baek Ah's metric, a pretty admirable job of staring down So. It is not a task for the faint-hearted. "Yo uses him to manage lower-level connections. Spies."

"And you're the alternative to Won's spy network?"

"One alternative," Ha Jin whispers.

So slides his gaze to Baek Ah, as if Baek Ah is supposed to have answers. "A word?"

Baek Ah follows him out of the room. It's his house, so perhaps he should be more worried that this strange intruder will try to lift any of the high-priced artifacts lying around for the taking, but—he isn't.

"What the hell?" So hisses, when they're alone.

Baek Ah had hoped they would meet under different circumstances. That So would come here and get some sleep, something to erase the gray circles under his ever-wild eyes. Instead, he is bullet sharp, too quick for his own good.

"If you don't believe her, why don't you just call Soo-kyung?"

"He's out of the country. I can't reach him."

"Out of the country?"

"Daughter. College. America."

"Ah." Baek Ah rubs at a muscle in the back of his neck. "So Ha Jin, just shows up here…knows where to find you, knows his name, Won's name, _Yo_ ' _s_ name?"

"It would be like Yo," So observes darkly, "To play some sort of trick. Anything to take me out at the knees." He swears harshly under his breath. "I saw _her_. She might as well have confirmed it to my face. She's planning a coup. Yo must be fronting it, she wouldn't want Jung in the line of fire…"

He's talking about his mother. Baek Ah's chest hurts. "You went to see her."

"Yes." So isn't looking at him.

"Because you wanted her to tell you the truth?"

So looks at him. It's worse. It's much worse. "No," he says. "I went to see her because I wanted her to ask for my help."

Baek Ah draws in a sharp breath.

"You see?" So laughs, a twisted, ugly thing. "There are so many for whom I'd commit open treason. But no one ever asks me to. It keeps me an honest man." He scrapes a hand through his hair. Baek Ah realizes that he has added to the collection of characters tattooed on his knuckles since their last meeting; they are not quite legible, under the bruising from his latest fight.

"What are you going to do?"

"I would say we throw her out and let her find somewhere else to stay," So suggests coldly, but Baek Ah doesn't think his heart is in it. "Or I stick my neck out for Yo to strangle. _Aish_ , I want a cigarette."

Baek Ah's home is adamantly smoke-free. "Can I get you to trade one vice for another? I have wine."

"Wine?"

"I have _soju_."

"That's more like it," So says wearily. "No need to throw this Ha Jin out tonight, I suppose. Deal with her in the morning, Baek Ah—but keep her away from me."

 _ii._

"Are you certain you didn't know her?"

"Wook, you must be trying to piss me off." Yeon Hwa tugs out a hairpin. She had liked the feeling of Yo's eyes on her, and that stung, because she had spent many years pushing away Yo's wiles. How dare they have any effect now?

All it means is that Yeon Hwa's heart is tired of rotting, tired of waiting. She knows as well as everyone else does: So is out of reach.

"Myung Hee would want me to be happy," Wook muses, hands clasped behind his back. Their mother is asleep; Yeon Hwa lives in the family house, and Wook often stays there, though he owns his own expansive flat near the Wang-Hwangbo headquarters. It is like old times, Yeon Hwa thinks. Wook and her, whispering after a party. Him scheming; her trying to untangle her mess of emotions about the Wang brothers.

"Aren't you trying to make some sort of power move?" She takes out her earrings and lays them in a delicate porcelain tray. "Since old Wang is dying? A strange time to worry about a girl. Much less a common _nyeon_ like that one."

Wook lifts his eyes to the ornately molded ceiling. "Hmm."

"If you do a thing, do it completely." Yeon Hwa sniffs disdainfully. She fears her brother when she least respects him, when he moves so slowly it can only be with long-determined purpose. "If you plan to take on the company, and put our name first, keep your focus on that. Leave the bitches to the Wangs. Lord knows they get enough of them."

"Even you?" He says it so softly it doesn't quite register. When it does, she feels the blood rushing to her face.

"I don't know what you mean by that."

Wook smiles. It's a thin smile. She's felt it on her own face, but it chills her, to see it on his. "If you want me to do a thing completely, sister, then be certain you aren't the one to stand in my way."

Yeon Hwa will not tremble. She is stronger than that.

Wook, still smiling, leaves her.

(She trembles.)

 _iii._

He doesn't sleep, but the girl does. She curls up on one of Baek Ah's sofas as though she is safe in this unknown place.

As though she trusts them.

And maybe she does.

So digs his nails into the palms of his hands and tells himself that he is right to doubt her. It is too convenient. It has always been too convenient for him to be cast off, tricked, left in the cold.

Ha Jin sighs in her sleep. A sudden image, unbidden, thrusts itself into So's mind—his arms around her, her head pillowed in the hollow of his shoulder. He half-fancies that he knows how soft her skin would be under his hands. Half-fancies that there is peace, somewhere, for them.

 _Them_?

He must be going mad. He has had good reason to go mad for years. He rubs at his eyes with his fists and goes in search of Baek Ah's coffee pot.

If he can't sleep, he might as well think.

(Not of the girl, and her soft skin he hasn't even touched.)

(Never her.)

In the morning, he will not let Baek Ah be his messenger. He will be the one to tell her to go.

 _iv._

"Blood."

Taejo swipes quickly at his lips, but it is too late; Yoo has already seen it.

"My throat is hoarse, damnably. It's nothing."

"Blood," Yoo repeats, "In your lungs." She is dressed simple for night—as simply as she ever is, in a gossamer silk robe over her night clothes. She skims absently over the screen of her phone with a finger. "Never a good thing."

 _His_ phone blinks with an unread text from Mu. He watches as Yoo's eyes flicker towards it, cold and curious. "Maybe you're right." He gestures to the wide bed. "I think I should sleep alone tonight."

"Of course, _yeobo_. I want you to rest." She smiles. "For as long as you need."

When she has gone to her own rooms, Taejo opens Mu's text.

 _So is here. You should see him._

Taejo sighs and presses the hard edge of his phone against his brow. So is the most difficult of all his children, through no real fault of his own. It began with Yoo, of course—with the only time Taejo had ever seen her really lose control of her hair-trigger emotions.

Unfortunately, on that only time, she had a knife in her hand.

And after that, what to do? It seemed right to send him away and let some other family give him the home he needed. When Taejo discovered that So was mistreated by the Kangs, in school and out, it was too late to make a change.

As for the man he became…

Reluctantly, he replies. _Tell him to come and visit me tomorrow. Send Ji Mong as well._

It is better to have someone else in the room, so he doesn't have to quite meet his son's eyes.

 _v._

She opens her eyes to light, and wakes to the sound of rushing water.

She is Hae Soo again, warm beneath silken coverlets in the palace. He has just left her side for a moment—he is—

"So?"

She catches herself. She is Ha Jin here. Her mother and father are likely wondering where she is, for they _will_ worry over her, over the fact that she has been gone all night and the fact that her interests, since the coma, are focused on something they cannot understand.

She is Ha Jin here, and the man standing over her does not love her in this world.

When he speaks, his voice is level. He looks as though he has not slept, but his eyes are less wild. "Until I can verify your identity," So says, "I'd be a fool to let you stay here."

Ha Jin gets to her feet. She should have expected this. That he would not know her, or want her.

She is certain that he needs her.

"I only want to help you," she says.

"If there is anything for me to do in Daegu," he answers, dangerously soft, "I will do it myself."

Only when he has closed the door of Baek Ah's house behind her does Ha Jin let herself cry.

 _vi._

"You sent her away?"

He doesn't need Baek Ah's judgment. So tears his gaze away from the window, where Ha Jin is just a red speck in the distance, and lifts a brow as a challenge. "What of it? I know what I have to do."

Baek Ah looks tempted to say, _no you don't_ , but thinks better of it.

This is why So likes him better than practically anyone else.

"I thought you did not want to talk to her."

"I didn't. I said very few words, I promise you."

Baek Ah frowns. "You'll need all the help you can get."

"In keeping my mother and brothers to heel?" He smiles, because it is as easy as doing anything else—so, no very easy at all. "I'm the wolf-dog of Seoul, remember?"

"You mean," Baek Ah asks, "All you want is peace? You're not trying to take your father's place?"

So feels himself go still. Baek Ah can be trusted, he is certain of that. But Mu's proposition is not one he can even bring himself to utter aloud.

He faces Baek Ah head-on, and lets the smile fade away. "I am not my father." The words don't seem forceful enough. "I am never my father."


	6. Chapter 6

_"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces_

 _Between stars—on stars where no human race is._

 _I have it in me so much nearer home_

 _To scare myself with my own desert places."_

 _\- Robert Frost_

 _i._

This time, Choi Ji Mong finds her.

"So," he says wearily. "You remember them."

"Of course I remember them," Ha Jin hisses. She'd like to shout, but they're in the kitchen, only a few yards away from where her parents are reading _at_ each other, not talking. Ji Mong talked his way in by pretending to be a job interviewer doing a follow-up call, and ever since, Ha Jin has been waiting for an opportunity to throttle him.

"Very rare," he says, tilting his head. "That someone would blend cycles as you have—seeing all of them with open eyes."

"You have too. Although you're no longer a beggar by the waterfront."

"Yes." Ji Mong just shrugs. "Whatever you did in Goryeo changed _my_ fortunes. Linked me inextricably with the Wangs and Hwangbos and all the res. I used to watch from the street corners. Now…"

"Now you can get me _in_ ," Ha Jin tells him, flattening her palm against the tabletop.

Ji Mong glares. "That's why I'm _here_. You've caused enough trouble already, sneaking off to Baek Ah's, seeing So—don't think I wouldn't find out."

"Don't think I was trying to hide from you!" Her voices rises a little and her father peers over the edge of his paper, curious. "I was trying to _find_ you."

"Why, Ha Jin?" Ji Mong asks. "You already lived Hae Soo's life. They lived their old lives as princes of Goryeo, and did what fate and time intended. You have no place among them now."

"That," Ha Jin says, deadly calm, "Is not for you to choose."

He stands up, rounded face set in surprisingly hard lines. "What could you do for them? I remember it too. You couldn't save them, there. You could not save _him_."

Ha Jin is on her feet, fists balled against her sides. "I didn't know who to trust there," she bites out, bitter and sharp. "Did you?"

His eyes shift away from hers.

"I do not believe in fearing fate," she says, quieter. "Not anymore. Let me help them, please?"

In the distance, thunder.

In the present moment, a cloud of uncertainty on Ji Mong's brow.

Ha Jin chooses her cliff and leaps off it. "How," she asks, "Could I possibly make things _worse_?"

…

"You'll start as an assistant," Ji Mong explains, when they're crowded into his office. It's littered with papers and proofs, digital renderings of textile prints and flyers for gallery openings. "That's all that we can justify, at the moment, with…the current situation. And if it gets out of hand, you're gone, understand?"

Ha Jin nods. "So do you think Yo or Wook is behind the shipment hijackings?"

"Ah, _jinjihage_!" Ji Mong throws up his hands. "You're already starting in! Keep your mouth shut and your head down."

Ha Jin feels a smile twisting over her face, utterly devoid of warmth. This didn't used to happen before. "You mean," she says slowly, "Like when I was supposed to marry the king? Is that when I should have kept my head down?"

Ji Mong has the good grace to look ashamed.

Ha Jin scoops up the employment papers from his overflowing desk and counts it as a victory.

…

Ji Mong's office is tucked in the corner of the Wang-Hwangbo highrise. To get out to the street, Ha Jin has to leave the same way she came in: through a vaulted hallway that resembles a western cathedral—

—or an ancient palace.

She clutches her application to her chest, lowers her head, and cross the path of another young woman who glides by her with an easy, confident step.

Ha Jin raises her head, and for the thousandth time in this strange week, she knows who it is she sees. This time, it is the face of a friend who didn't make it out of Goryeo alive.

 _Woo Hee_.

Woo Hee doesn't look twice at her. Just keeps walking, sensible pumps clicking against the tiles.

She must be an assistant too, Ha Jin muses. An assistant seems humble and harmless, but Ha Jin herself is trying to leverage the position towards an invisible goal. And if the Woo Hee of modern Korea is anything like the displaced princess of Later Baekje.

Ha Jin's mouth pinches in a frown. Another person to save.

 _ii._

Yo steps out of a meeting, having effectively squashed the competition vying to win a capsule collection. It's for a coalition of Parisian designers who are looking to turn attention to the east, and Wang-Hwangbo is in the perfect position to offer high-end taffeta and silk-thread.

It's the last card in the hand he plans to play. The staff and resources used to close the deal are all under the direct purview of _Gwangjong_ , the subsidiary branch of Wang-Hwangbo that has been his mother's game since the beginning. She brought fashion connections to the larger table in the exchange for an isolated holding.

Gwangjong, Yo feels certain, is the way of the future. He is his mother's chosen scalpel—the surgery on the family name will be absolute and life-saving, at least for him.

She set him on the path of a model career in his early teens; she taught him to ferret out weaknesses over drinks and in the boardroom. She did all of this while remaining impeccable and almost out-of-sight.

His mother understands the world without having to be in it.

Now, when his father breaks and calls a family meeting—which Yo is sure he will—Mu will have to come clean about the lost shipments, the wavering market. Yo, on the other hand, will have a bouquet of ripe prospects to present.

His phone rings, breaking the silence on the glass-rimmed tunnel. He turns a corner in the hall and answers it so he can cup his hand over his mouth and speak quietly.

"I'm sorry," he says. "It's been a busy week."

"More like a busy month." She sounds more tired than accusatory. "He stands at the window every night and watches for you."

Yo pinches his brow. This, he suspects, is probably guilt. "I know. I'll…"

Footsteps, only heard when very, very near. He hangs up without telling her why, and meets Wook's serenely smiling countenance.

"What are you doing here?"

"I have an office here too, you know, _hyung-nim_."

The respect is velvet-touched; Yo doesn't trust it for a moment. "I didn't realize you stayed so late."

"You just left a meeting?" Wook's eyebrows lever upwards. "Did I see…Versace? That's quite something, for an evening meeting. Why not deal in daylight, Yo?"

"I think," Yo says coldly, "That vultures prefer the day. I do not." He slips his phone into his pocket. He hates himself more than he ordinarily allows, but his goddamn heart won't stop ratcheting. He wonders if Wook can hear it.

"You seem uneasy." Wook tilts his head. "A personal call? I didn't mean to interrupt."

"It was Jung," Yo lies, smiling. Sometimes he hates Wook almost as much as he hates So, and that is an accomplishment indeed. "I was cancelling dinner plans. A disappointment for both of us."

Wook trades his attaché from one hand to the other. "The Wangs are more fraternal than expected."

"I would not expect an outsider to understand us." Yo glances at his watch and steps past Wook. "Send my compliments to your sister—at least as many you can stomach."

 _iii._

"It's slow-going," Chae Ryung explains. She's a talker; Woo Hee has barely been able to get a word in edgewise in the few days they've been staying together. Not that she needs too; it is Chae Ryung who needs to teach her to be an outstanding yet simultaneously unremarkable assistant. Chae Ryung is only a waitress in the enormous office restaurant, but she knows many things.

Woo Hee wonders if she should be taking notes.

"As an assistant, you're not strictly in charge of shipping. They've been upping security, too, lately, since the takeovers have been successful." She finishes braiding her hair for the night and reaches for a green-tea face mask. "Your job is too catch the details when you can, where you can. If you're serving tea in a meeting, or sorting through the mail—always be on the lookout for anything about routes and risk-assessment."

"Risk-assessment?"

"Contingency plans." Chae Ryung presses the oval sheet carefully against her cheeks. "Wang Mu—he's the CEO's oldest son, you know, and when the old man finally shrivels up everyone _thinks_ he'll get it—thinks he's clever. He's certainly cautious; clever doesn't quite count up." She swore. " _Aigo_ , I can never put one of these on without tearing it."

Woo Hee stretches out on the bed opposite Chae Ryung's, in the shoebox-size flat she knows she'll never truly call home. "How many are there again?"

"There are four Wang sons, one Hwangbo son. Then there's Baek Ah and Eun, who are good-for-nothing but might as well be family, if you ask Wang Jung or Wang Mu. Baek Ah and Eun," Chae Ryung elaborates, sitting down cross-legged and staring ghost-like from behind the mask, "Are the sons of the design team who started at Wang Hwangbo…oh, thirty years ago. The husband's been dead since Eun was small. I mean, he's still small. Only eighteen, and a shrimp for his age." She giggles.

"Who else?"

"Baek Ah is twenty-six, which isn't much younger than Hwangbo Wook—he's twenty-eight—but Baek Ah doesn't care about the company." Chae Ryung sniffs. Woo Hee wonders if at any point she is supposed to laugh or swear in return, though neither is really her style. She is more wont to listen quietly, soaking in the prospects of pain or vengeance or cold ambition.

Anything, really.

Chae Ryung doesn't mind the silence, that's for certain. "Kim Won is the son of the original accountant," she says, affection coloring her tone. "He is Wang Yo's _right hand_. Wang Yo, of course, is the one who _deserves_ to take over the company."

 _The one_ , Woo Hee assumes, _who is paying me._

"What about the other son?"

"Other son?"

"You said there were four Wang sons."

"Oh. There's Wang So, but he's a murdering mobster from Seoul." Chae Ryung shakes her head. "If he's still alive, I doubt you'll ever see him."

Woo Hee, for her parts, doubts that she will care much for any of them.

 _iv._

"Jung-ah."

" _Nae_ , _Omma_?" He was supposed to be at a wrestling match fifteen minutes ago; he's going to miss it. But his mother is more anxious than usual about him; she keeps reaching for his hands and forcing more rice-sugar cakes on him.

That, at least, Jung doesn't mind.

"I don't want you to stay at Eun's this month."

" _Heol_?" The exclamation of surprise is out before he can stop himself. "Why not? I promise, everything is done in good fun. Nothing to…" he searches for an English expression that will amuse her. " _Break the bank._ "

Her lips tighten at the corners. "You know I never mind you having fun. But I heard that _he_ is staying there."

Jung shifts uncomfortably. His mother—and Yo's—hatred of So is something he doesn't like to think much about, but that doesn't make it less obvious. Mu may only be their half-brother, the son of their father's deceased first wife, but he is the only one of the family is anything near _close_ with So.

"So did come to visit," he answers carefully, "But I don't know if he's staying. He and Baek Ah are friendly."

" _Aish_ , as if he can be friendly with anyone!" His mother sighs deeply, and crumbles the remainder of her own cake in her hand. "He's dangerous, Jung-ah. And he will take it out on you. That is what beasts do, you know. They bite anyone who seems within easy reach." She strokes his cheek, her face twisting with worry. "I couldn't bear it if anything happens to you."

So has killed people. Jung does not doubt this. He also does not think that So would ever try to kill him. The few times Jung has seen So in the past few years, he has been reminded more of a shadow than anything else.

So may have blood on his hands, but Jung wonders how much of it is his own blood.

"I can take care of myself," Jung promises. He doesn't want to stay in the grand house on Songak Street, where his father is always coughing and his mother watches him so closely it stifles him. He loves his mother, but he also needs air. "I'll…stay with Yo, if that would make you happy."

Yo will want him out of the house as much as possible, which will be a convenient compromise. Yo has three spacious floors of a sumptuous penthouse all to himself, but he likes to be alone.

His mother relaxes slightly. "Very well," she says. "As long as you keep clear of _him_. He can't be trusted, Jung. Never forget that."

Jung doesn't think he ever can.

 _v._

In two years, his father has become an old man.

So does not take the time or trouble to sort through what is in his heart; he knows it only to be a sorry, knotted thing, serving its sentence under his ribs. But something under his ribs hurts when he sees his father stand on unsteady feet, gripping the carved arm of his desk chair as if he might fall.

So bows. A week ago in Seoul, he nearly killed a man. Now he prays for any appearance of meekness.

Anything that will make his father soften.

Taejo's bloodshot eyes regard him warily, though, which is pretty much what So expected.

"You came all the way to see me," he says heavily. "What is it?"

It would seem strange, for a man who lives by his fists, to say, _I was worried about you_ , and therefore, So doesn't. "Mu tells me you are unwell."

"What else did Mu tell you?"

So bites his lip. Beside him, Ji Mong clears his throat, as if to say, _not now_ , and So knows his instinct of silence was correct.

"You always leave me feeling like I've kicked the dog," Taejo says, and drags a hand over his eyes. "Your timing isn't bad, So. I would have called for you."

"Would you?" That escapes before he can think better of it.

Ji Mong draws in a little breath.

"I would have had Mu call you, at least." Taejo has never liked being pressed on the point of parental devotion, which is why So usually leaves well enough alone. It's all water under the bridge, anyway. Nobody can take anything back. "Yes, I am unwell. Everyone here knows it, whether I want them to or not. I'll hold a meeting soon." He raises his eyebrows. "You should come, but first, dress like one of the family. You look like a thug."

So nods. He is one, but that doesn't need to be said. "Thank you, _abeoji_."

The word has always felt wrong in his mouth.


	7. Chapter 7

_You do not have to be good.  
You do not have to walk on your knees  
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.  
You only have to let the soft animal of your body  
love what it loves.  
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.  
Meanwhile the world goes on._

 _-_ Mary Oliver

 _Let our scars fall in love._

\- Galway Kinnell

 _i._

Ha Jin could find many griefs in her current life, if only she went looking for them.

Here is one she does not have to go looking for: her mother.

She remembers the stone altars, and how her hands trembled when she folded them to pray for someone who hadn't even been born yet. She feared him there, at first, though she wouldn't admit it. After, she forgave him there.

It wasn't so far from a snowfall, and every other kind of fall that followed.

But: her mother. Her mother doesn't understand why Ha Jin lay still as death for six months, and then woke suddenly and inexplicably, and became obsessed with an ancient history museum. She understands better, perhaps, why Ha Jin would want to work for the textile industry—fashion is at least connected, in some way, to her prior career as a makeup artist.

Still, a mother's worries never cease. "Are you sure you're well, yet?" She tucks a lock of Ha Jin's hair behind her ear with a gentle finger. "You seem so restless, since you…woke up."

 _Came back_ , Ha Jin thinks. In the mirror over her mother's shoulder, she marvels again at how she looks so young.

Her leg doesn't hurt here. It was never twisted in a vise. She was never under false suspicion of poisoning a prince, in this world.

(He still had the scar. The scars.)

"I'm just glad to have a new job, _Omma_. I'm…excited." And she is, but not in a way her mother would understand.

Her first week of work is largely uninteresting. She is somewhere half between a secretary and a maid—answering phones, fetching coffee, guiding visiting tycoons to sumptuous offices that float many stories above the grime of the city streets. She keeps her ears pricked; she watches Ji Mong like a fox whenever she sees him fast, just in case he has some message to convey to her.

He never does.

So. The week passes, and then Ha Jin gets her orders. A whole batch of the assistants do; they are assigned to waitress a private family dinner that Wang Taejo is hosting for his sons, the Hwangbos, and the young blood of his most trusted (current and former) business partners.

Ha Jin thinks of Goryeo, the exorcism ritual, the passing of masks. She accepts her assignment with a nod and a quick, flat smile.

The night of the dinner, the three connected conference rooms on floor fifteen of the Wang-Hwangbo building are opened into one long, tunneling space. The internal walls fold away and bouquets tables laden with canapes and cocktails are arranged. Hours beforehand, Ha Jin and the other assistances are given simple black dresses to wear. They are snug-fitting, dipping low in the back.

Every world has its court ladies, seemingly.

She doesn't see Woo Hee, in the chosen group. She _does_ see Chae Ryung.

"So this is how you know Baek Ah," Chae Ryung remarks, with a slightly-too-sweet smile.

Ha Jin decides it is in her best interest to feign a huff. "What of it?" Already, there are too many lies.

Ha Jin hopes they won't overtake her.

 _ii._

Yeon Hwa once poured a glass of merlot over a man's head at dinner without getting a single drop on her cream-colored Chanel suit.

The man in question was not Wang Yo, but she recalls the incident pointedly when his hand drifts to her lower back for the third time in thirty minutes.

"What are you doing?"

His lips brush her ear. He smells like sin, bottled in amber glass and sold for some ostentatious amount of money. "Irritating your brother."

Across the room, Wook looks unaffected to all but the most discerning eye. Yeon Hwa, possessor of that eye, can see the compressed line of his mouth. She pushes Yo away, raking her nails over the fine-woven sleeve of his burgundy suit. "Stop it, damn you. I can make Wook angry on my own."

"Do you want to?"

At the moment, she's more angry at herself. They've been milling about, waiting for the call to meeting, with Wang Taejo nowhere to be seen. As such, the worst and sharpest of family and inter-family dynamics have made their appearance.

So hasn't even looked in their direction, hasn't been jealous in the least. Yeon Hwa, for her part, has been stealing far too many glances at the devastating lines of his black suit. Whatever Wang So's estrangement from Yo, they must share the same tailor—everything is fitted within an inch of its life.

So has spoken to Baek Ah, Wook, and has tried to speak to his mother. That last was painful to watch, even though Yeon Hwa couldn't hear a word they said.  
Yo still watches her, and she wrenches her eyes from So, too late.

"Aish," Yo says quietly. "Am I second-best to him, after all this time? You'd rather have the carved-up gutter rat."

To defend So in this moment is to give herself away. Yeon Hwa is always careful with herself.

"You always want to be first in everyone's estimation," she tells Yo, going on offense instead. "Even though nobody but yourself is first in yours."

His fingers close, vise-like around hers. He has his mother's eyes, impossibly dark and often deadly. "Are you _very_ sure about that?"

Wook is making his way towards them. Yo drops her hand and assumes his usual mocking smirk. There's no depth to it. He salutes Wook and then fades off into the crowd.

Wook opens his mouth to speak and Yeon Hwa just…can't do it. Not tonight. She takes her fate into her own hands, whether it looks desperate or not, and marches towards So.

For all that he hasn't made a single effort to greet her, he smiles.

"Yeon Hwa."

"It's been a long time," she says tightly.

"Yes." He looks ill at ease in this room, eyes constantly darting to the exits. "I had business elsewhere."

"But you're needed here," she tells him. Tempted to put a hand on his arm, but Yo did that a moment ago to her and she doesn't want to acknowledge that it meant something. "We're glad to see you."

"You are, maybe," So tells her. "Thank you." Then he stops still, eyes narrowing.

Swiftly, Yeon Hwa follows his gaze.

And there, across the room pouring tea, is the girl who was on Wook's arm at the museum tradeshow.

 _iii._

She's here again, crossing his path and setting all his senses ablaze. It isn't fair, but nothing is ever fair in life, and therefore So spares little thought to that.

No, he's far more interested in who is truly behind this girl's mysterious appearances: who would know that he had gone to Baek Ah's, who would know Park Soo-kyung's name, who would know that leadership in the company would soon be shifting.

So fights with his fists; he has no stomach for politics.

Across the room, Yo laughs at something their mother says.

The whiplash of isolation has descended upon So countless times; he has already felt it twice tonight, when neither Yo nor their mother would greet him. He supposes this is his due, to be chasing down a shadow while they have already set their plans in motion.

Doubtless, this girl is one of Yo's.

(There was a model once. Yo met her in Paris, but she was from Jinan. It must have been five, six years ago? So came home, and nobody wanted him, but in a handful of moments he thought he saw something soften in Yo's face. The next time he returned, the girl from Jinan was gone.)

So doesn't know much. Never has, never will. His nerves sizzle to the outer edges of his skin, he can smell danger, he can break the wrist of a thrown punch by catching the fist in his hand and twisting sharply.

He doesn't know much, but he doesn't like to think that this girl is one of Yo's.

She has slipped into the hallway, no doubt helping prepare the room where Taejo will hold court.

 _Where everything will change_ , whispers in So's ear, but he shakes it away and hunts her down.

"You."

She lets out a startled cry as he catches her arm and spins her, back against the wall, out of sight around a corner.

"I told you," she whispers. "I'm on your side."

(Why was Yo laughing?)

"You're following me," he answers, not letting go of her arm. Her skin _is_ soft to his touch. He aches, and he is angry, and the two are so often inextricable from each other. "You're a spy."

"I told you I was." She is different now than she was by the side of Baek Ah's pool, she is wearing more red on her mouth and charcoal around her eyes. "I told you I was here, to spy, and help you."

The meeting will start soon. He can't be late. He can't be anything except a bullet loaded and ready. He lets Ha Jin's arm go.

"Tell me," he says quietly, "One thing. Anything, that will really prove your help."

She glances, left, right, back at him. "You don't trust Yo," she says, "And you shouldn't. But you also shouldn't trust Wook. He'll strike when you're not expecting it."

Wook is unlike him in nearly every way. Collected and patient and beloved. In one way, though, they are the same:

Neither is ambitious.

Is that still the truth?

He swallows hard. Looking at Ha Jin's face, shining through its heavy makeup, does something to him that he cannot understand. It wakes some softness and some degree of complication that doesn't, he is sure, rightly belong to him.

"If you are wrong," he says fiercely, "You will regret the day you crossed my path."

She bites her lip. She says, "I won't regret that day."

Mu appears at the other end of the hall. He beckons So with a tilt of his chin. Something is about to happen, and there is no time.

So leaves her, and feels it in every step.

 _iv._

He trusts So. Mu, of course, is trusting by nature, but So has been like an open book to him ever since the doctor ask Mu to hold So's six-year-old hands away from his bleeding face.

"I did not mean to interrupt," he tells So now.

So thrusts his hands into his pockets, jaw set sharply. "You interrupted nothing."

That's a lie, but Mu doesn't press it. So's troubles, or not-troubles, with one of Wang-Hwanbo's endless stream of pretty assistants, is not the most important thing at the moment. "I could not bring myself to tell our father of our conversation," Mu says.

So flinches. "I…"

"Yes, I understand. You are still reluctant." Mu feels his skin prickle with anxiety. He needs So to step up, but it's not something he can order or demand. It is only something he can ask. "When he announces me as successor tonight, I will have to take up the reins. At least…at least for now."

"How much longer," So says, voice as cold as Yoo or Yo's, but eyes still tormented, "Do you really think our father has to live?"

It destroys Mu, to even think of it. To think of the person he loves most (and most imperfectly), laid to rest. But Taejo is not immortal. He never has been. "I don't know," he answers truthfully. "But he will want a clean transfer of power. He'll hand off to me, and then…"

"Me." So bites his lip. "You'll hand it over to me."

 _v._

Inside the room, the assistants file out with their heads bowed, having poured tea and pale liquor in squat, soap-bubble-thin glasses. Baek Ah is sorry to see them go, not for such a shallow reason as that they are beautiful women, but because without them, it is only the whole terrible hierarchy of his entire life, gathered around one table.

Eun and Jung are shifting uncomfortably to his right. On his left, Won is texting with his phone between his knees. Yo leans back, but his eyes are merciless in their surveillance. Wook rests calmly across from him, hands folded together.

So and Mu enter at the same time. So is only wearing a suit because Baek Ah called in some favors, and had one ready-made in black merino.

So, drawn tight as wire, sits down at the far end of the table. Mu joins his father at the head.

Yoo is here too, and so is Mrs. Hwangbo, who is as unshakeable as her two children. Baek Ah has never had much to do with Yeon Hwa, but his opinion of her is not much higher than his opinion of Wook.

Looking around this assembly, he finds himself thinking of vultures and eagles, and feels himself to be neither of these two.

Taejo looks almost deathly ill. His hand grips the lacquered edge of the table, and when he speaks, it is with effort. "You may wonder why everyone here is young," he said. "You may wonder where my vice-chairmen are, and my advisors."

There's a weighted silence.

 _Every single person in this room_ , Baek Ah thinks, _is unhappy_.

That is the reason he leaves.

Eun and Jung—and So—are the reasons he comes back again.

"You are all here," Taejo continues at last, "Because you are the company."

A ripple of conversation. Jung to Eun. Won to Yo.

Wook and So are stone-still and silent. Baek Ah does not know what to make of the parallel.

"I hope to hold out for a month," Taejo explains. "These things should be done properly. An announcement of my retirement—" Despite his frailty, Baek Ah notices that he is too proud to say _why_ —"And my successor."

His eyes turn to Mu, and Baek Ah is certain of what comes next, until he isn't.

Wook stands up. Slowly, surely, as a snake might lift its head from endless coils. "Forgive me," he says, bowing formally to Taejo. "Before you make any pronouncements, _daebu_ , there's something I have to bring to our attention. As a near-family, we have to be cautious."

"What is it?" Taejo is vexed, and, Baek Ah thinks, confused.

Yo is bone-white. His hands are fists, the signet ring on his middle finger winking darkly. Baek Ah suspects that Yo had planned to interrupt, and that Wook beat him to it.

(The world is changing.)

Wook taps his phone, and the screen on the far wall blinks to life. Everyone turns, jackknife-quick, but the only thing to do is watch.

In a second, shaky footage appears, then steadies into resolution. Baek Ah draws in a breath that is matched by everyone from Eun to Yeon Hwa. It's an image of Mu, on the phone.

" _I'm going to tell him_ ," he is saying. " _I can't do this. It's not my dream, it never has been. I don't want the responsibility of a goddamn empire. I don't want—the whole thing's in shambles. The company has been driven into the ground._ "

The screen goes black. The silence is blacker.

Mu shoots to his feet, frantic. Tortured. " _Abeoji_ …"

Baek Ah tightens his hands on the arms of his chair. This isn't his battle, but everything is their own war. Everything.

"It is my understanding," Wook says smoothly, before Mu can continue. Wook's lips are tipped down with concern. "It is my understanding that this has been leaked to the press. We have days, maybe. More likely—hours, before the stock prices drop."

Taejo splutters, and says nothing. It's too late. Whatever Wook was doing, he has done it. To call him a traitor is to expose Mu to further judgment; to call Mu a traitor is to play into Wook's hands. Or Yoo's, or Yo's, though neither of them seem to have prepared for this.

And most of all, Taejo cannot name Mu his successor, now. He can't choose a man who doesn't believe in what this room represents, what billions upon billions of _won_ represent.

The market would never trust him.

He can't choose a traitor, which is what everyone will believe Mu to be.

Baek Ah drops his chin to his chest. He can't bear to see the pain on Mu's face. Who is Baek Ah, to judge him? He would have lived all his days in Namwon, if So hadn't needed him.

This isn't his dream, either.

"I understand that this is embarrassing." Wook's voice is still silky. He directs his next bow to Mu. "My apologies. I thought we should all be prepared."

If looks could kill, Wook would be dead from several directions. Mu is generally peaceable, but he looks like he'd like to throttle him.

Taejo's gray pallor has flushed to an unhealthy shade of purple. When he stands, he has to lean on both hands. "Well," he says. "If you want me to thank you, Hwangbo's son, you will not hear such words here."

Wook smiles, and waits.

Taejo's voice rises. "You all want it so much," he bellows, staring down the lot of them. Even Baek Ah feels the heat of his gaze. "You want to rule, every last one of you. Very well then. I accept." He lifts one hand from the table, a gesture of challenge. "Take it. Take it from him, you wolves. Take it from each other."

Then he collapses.


	8. Chapter 8

_The centuries turn their locks_

 _And open under the hill_

 _Their inherited books and doors_

 _\- W.S. Graham_

 _They say the truth works two ways_

 _(maybe the truth's not what we need)_

 _\- Mumford & Sons_

SEOUL, KOREA – five years ago

 _i._

So remembers—

"You look tired." Wook pours him another cup of tea. "Are you living well?"

What is there to say to that? So is nursing three cracked ribs, and has not been to Daegu in a year. Park Soo-kyung, usually gruff and merciless, has told him to rest. He had not expected Wook to visit; he never expects anyone to visit.

"Is there any news," So asks, avoiding the question, "Of the expansion?"

Wook purses his lips. "Wang Taejo has pushed off the U.S. contract again. He's concerned about the market."

To So's understanding, the market is primed and ready for Korean connections. But he is not Wook, or his father, and his help is never sought on such matters. The real question he has—when will his father write to him again, or call—is not one he will ask Wook.

"I will be in Daegu at New Year's," So says, sipping at the tea. Swallowing is painful. "Will you be at home?"

"That's why I came," Wook says, and for the next half-hour he explains quietly that So had better not come home at all, tensions are running high and it would be wise not to stir the pot. Of course, two months later, Wook scales higher in the management of the company, taking over a position that had been left open by Hwangbo's death two years earlier.

At the time, So is pleased that the position does not get subsumed under his mother's aegis of power. At the time, So presumes that Wook kept him away to spare him familial infighting, not to clear the path for his own advancement.

After all, who would think of promoting So?

"For now, keep your distance," Wook said, when the tea was finished.

It felt like kindness, then.

It feels, now, like a warning.

 _ii._

The party breaks up to the shriek of ambulance sirens. In a few moments, the news spreads like wildfire: CEO Wang has had a heart attack.

Or a stroke.

Or he is already dead.

What is rumor and what is truth is, of course, hard to divine in a flurry of faces and voices, all of which want to know what this means for themselves as well as for Wang Taejo. Ha Jin's heart is in her throat as she watches her former princes cluster in corners, brows knotted with worry.

Still, she must work and wait.

As the wife of the CEO, Yoo commandeers a microphone and speaks with dulcet calm. "The CEO has had an unexpected health setback," she says, as though her husband was not carried out on a stretcher moments before. Ha Jin wonders if the very publicity of his exit was part of someone's chess-piece plan. Surely a backdoor exists for time such as these.

Yoo tells the guests that the party must end early, but they are welcome to finish drinking and eating. Then she returns to talk with the former Queen Hwangbo, Jung's arm linked through hers.

Ha Jin tries to find So, but she can't. She is pouring another sherry for a lech of a businessman when So practically swoops down on her. His face is set like granite.

" _Ya_ ," he says. "We need to talk."

The businessman splutters something about his frazzled nerves, but Ha Jin isn't sorry to be free of his wandering hands. Anyway, So gives him a death-glare that settles him and his nerves.

She half-expects to be shoved into a coat closet, but So leads her, instead, out into the sharp evening chill. The nightlife of Daegu whistles around them. In her scanty dress, Ha Jin shivers.

" _Aish_ ," So mutters, and to her surprise, he shoulders off his immaculately fitted jacket and tosses it around her.

"What do you want?" She asks the question softly. It is impossible for her not to speak softly to him.

"Not here," he says, gruff. "Meet me at Baek Ah's. You seem to know the way."

Something else must have happened behind those closed doors. Something that she fears.

"Your father…" she begins, but he has already turned his back, ramrod stiff and resolute.

She may lose her job over this—leaving early—but Ha Jin doesn't care. She only got the job in the first place to win his trust.

She didn't think it would happen so soon.

She arrives at Baek Ah's before So does. She doesn't think there is anyone home until-

" _Aigo_ , what a mess!" Eun, in the most ridiculous tangerine silk pajamas that Ha Jin has ever seen, swans dramatically into the hall. "Wook is wily, I'm telling you. Always has been. And now he's all but killed—"

He sees her and stops short.

"My father always lives," Jung says confidently. "Always. But I've had enough talk of business tonight," Then he sees her too.

She had glimpsed them at the party, before it all fell apart. She had ached, then, over flashes of memory.

The ache has now swelled, and it pounds in her chest like a heart would.

"Who are you?" Eun asks, mouth rounding in surprise. "One of Baek Ah's—"

"Don't be rude," Jung mutters. He is upset, for all his appearance of bravery. Ha Jin wonders how much Jung loves his father in this world, or if his mother is once again his only star. "Miss, are you lost?"

They both loved her in Goryeo. She feels the loss of it as they stare at her, curious and ignorant.

"She's with me."

So's voice rings out behind her and in another moment, he has her by the elbow and is guiding her away from them. Even with the worries for Taejo hanging over everyone's head, _that_ will get the two of them gaping—So bringing a woman home, a woman wearing his jacket. Ha Jin assumes (hopes) that he doesn't have anyone here, and then hates herself for wishing isolation on him.

Hasn't he suffered enough?

 _I'm here now_ , she thinks stubbornly. _I'm here._

Whatever happens to his father, whatever will _not_ happen with his mother, she is here.

So shuts the door of a chestnut-paneled office behind them. He folds his arms, hands gripping his elbows. He has tattoos on every knuckle. One bears the characters for _wolf_ , another the character of _fire_.

Some part of him, Ha Jin thinks, must know.

"You knew," he says, and she jumps.

"What?"

"You knew that Wook was planning something. Tell me how."

She doesn't know what Wook did, but she can guess its essence. Can guess that Wook, with surgical precision, shifted the scales against Taejo's life and sanity…and his power. "Your eyes have always been on Yo," she suggests. She hopes, this time, he'll listen to her. "It's as I said. Wook is an enemy too. He wants the company for himself."

"So you said." A muscle in So's jaw twitches. "And it seemed unlikely. But now…"

"I listen and learn," Ha Jin says quickly. "That's why…I can be of value to you. Wook has been taking steps in the dark. When your mother fights for a place for her sons—" she bites her lip, hoping he won't flinch under the knowledge that that doesn't mean _all his mother's sons_ —"He has whispered in others' ears. If you let me, I can…I can get close to him. I can learn what he's plotting next."

She is speaking in vagaries, but mercifully, So seems momentarily convinced. He bites his lip, deep in thought. She knows that this isn't what he wants to do, or be—he hates intrigue and everything that makes men into shadows. He always has.

"It won't be safe," he says sharply. "Nothing in this city is. No one is."

"You don't care about me," Ha Jin reminds him, and feels the thrill of bittersweet satisfaction when he flinches slightly.

He recovers quickly. "Despite what you may believe from Soo-kyung or my snake-tongued family, I am not so hard as that." His fingers whiten, clenched too tightly. "You seem hellbent on helping me. It is not without risk."

"I'll take any risk," Ha Jin says, and she means it.

 _iii._

So Hwangbo has his vengeance after all.

Justice never enters her mind. His family knew it as a suicide; the media as an unexpected heart attack. Hwangbo's wife bore it with levelheaded grief; his children with silent, moon-faced depression.

Yoo knew it for what it was; arsenic to weaken the system over time, and one final, heavy dose to finish him off.

They are a weak family and they will all die weak.

So she thought.

She stays at the hospital by Taejo's side because it is what a wife is supposed to do—even though _she_ will do it for one night only. She combs her hair in the mirror of a private room, too small for her preference, though more luxurious than any other offering in this wing.

Wook had some fire in his belly after all, even if he didn't realize the irony of causing a _real_ heart attack.

Turn and turnabout. He rose after his father's death—to no great end—and now he wants to rise again.

(Justice never enters her mind.)

Yoo smiles at a cold reflection. It is almost impressive, to be sure, but it will not stop Wook from dying weak.

 _iv._

"I saw the news," Min Seo says, as soon as he arrives. "They say it's a heart attack?"

"They say any shit they can sell," Yo says wearily. He doesn't love her anymore—perhaps he never truly did—but he can let himself be weary around her. That is more than most. "The old man has to die someday."

She flattens her lips into a line. "Imagine if Kiha said that about you."

Yo glares. But his face softens when the bedroom door opens and Kiha bounds across the room into his arms. " _Appa!_ "

He buries his face in his son's thick hair, because this, no one can see: tenderness.

When Kiha wriggles away, Yo is suitably stern again.

"It's past your bedtime."

"You haven't been here in eleven nights," Kiha accuses him. He waves two fat hands. "That's more than my fingers."

" _Appa_ is busy," Min Seo says caustically. "He has funerals to attend."

"Funerals?" Kiha's round cheeks fall a little.

"No. _Aish_." Yo drags a hand over his face and glares at Min Seo again. She's clearly pissed at him for not coming around as often as he should. Their arrangement is harder for her, in many ways, than it is for him. Partly because she won't take as much money as he would give her, and partly because she has to live with shame while he only has to live with a secret. The latter is something that money cannot solve.

She could still model, he thinks, eyeing her slender figure. One pregnancy shouldn't finish that. He knows well enough that it did.

Min Seo softens a little over the course of an hour, but by the end of an hour, Yo has to leave. It was foolish of him to come here anyway, with Wook on the prowl for blood. Not to mention his mother.

She wouldn't speak to him, afterwards. She turned her face away with a sliver of the scorn she usually reserves for So, and performed her public duties. A warning, as sure as Wook's coup had been.

He didn't act soon enough. That is the long and short of it, the long and short of Yo's dangerous weakness—that he plans and plots and is endlessly clever, until he drops his guard.

He tightens his arms around Kiha. He has been known to drop his guard.

Mercifully, that is not yet known by his mother—or by Wook.

Yo wonders who between them would pay more for such a chink in his armor.

 _v._

"The girl," So says, not looking up from his soju, "Is sleeping here tonight."

Baek Ah has to swallow his astonishment, and chase it with a drink of his own. _"Jinjjaya_?" He half-expected So to be in a tortured state about his father, but the Wangs are never simple. Jung was similarly disaffected. "Did she…convince you?"

"Wook convinced me." So reaches for another bottle. "And she predicted Wook. _Voila_." He says the word, a French word, with a mocking little glance at Baek Ah, who spent a year in Paris.

There will be no talk of Taejo, then, or Mu. Baek Ah's heart stings for So anyway; for the way that everything in his world must be shaking. Baek Ah knows that Mu depends on So more than either of them let on, and surely it is reciprocal.

Baek Ah hopes that So knows he can depend on _him_ , too, but he is not anyone of import. Not really. Not here.

"She seems sincere," he says, to fill the space of silence. The girl—Ha Jin—looks at So as though she loves him. That is what Baek Ah does not say. "Whatever happened in that room…"

"I told you my father was dying," So returns, unexpectedly. "I came here, knowing that. Everything else is a duel, Baek Ah. A duel for a throne." He drops his head into his battered hands.

Baek Ah puts together the pieces of the puzzle. He asks, very cautiously, " _Your_ throne?"

So lifts his head. When he answers, it is not quite an answer. "I," he says, "Have never asked for it."


	9. Chapter 9

_The gray of misery is half as near_

 _When golden gleams glean promises from fear_

 _A knife set hard and sharp to future's spine_

 _Reminds us of the loss of things sublime_

\- E.L.

 _i._

"You've been quiet."

Woo Hee rolls over on her side, facing Chae Ryung. She has grown tired of those friendly, relentless stares, coming to realize that their rooming together is no accident.

Whoever hired Woo Hee doesn't trust her.

She supposes that is fair. She doesn't trust herself either.

What she hadn't quite expected was that her every waking move would be watched by a girl who fans her hair in twin tails over her shoulders, who applies red lipstick with an expert hand, and never stops talking.

Somehow, that is more unsettling than a shadowy figure around every corner.

"I'm tired," Woo Hee replies, pressing the back of her hand against her yawn. "It's been a long week, and last night…"

The day is splitting open like an overripe fruit. Sun is trickling through their narrow window. It is time to rise for work; later than usual, because the Wang-Hwangbo office is closed until noon in a show of solidarity with Taejo.

" _Jinjja_? After all that sleep?" Chae Ryung lifts her eyebrows. "You're a funny one. Anyway, I bet you we're getting new assignments today."

"From who?" Thing is, Woo Hee hasn't come face to face with whoever she is really working for. Not yet.

"Don't ask too many questions." Chae Ryung slips a pair of Louboutins out from under her cot. "It pays well. That's all that matters."

Woo Hee carries it all with her as she settles into the work of writing thank-you notes to the guests of last night's gala, assuring them in stilted message after stilted message that Wang Taejo will be perfectly fine. She is weighted down with why she came here— _revenge_ —and what she is doing. She's living a lie.

Something draws tight in her throat, a noose of her own making.

She hears footsteps in the hall, and looks up from her desk.

It is a moment, a single moment. But Woo Hee's life (and all the death it has contained) is distilled to single moments.

 _Him._

He strides with the same easy purpose, draped in the same soft, pricy garments, as she observed that day at the train station.

She was working behind closed doors at last night's party, she did not see the guests. Now she wonders if he was here all along.

Woo Hee wonders what it all means.

 _ii._

Baek Ah's father used to have this office. He knows that Wook has his eyes set higher than anything Baek Ah has been or will ever be, but it still rankles. It still rankles, the way Wook can touch anything.

Now, Wook—here before almost anyone else, and drinking green tea out of an enameled cup—smiles warmly. Baek Ah grits his teeth.

"You're here early, my friend," Wook says, and then adds, thoughtfully, "The fact that you're here at all…to what do I owe the pleasure?"

Baek Ah came here of his own volition. He doesn't know what So would want him to say, or if So would want him to say anything at all. Maybe all the questions are Baek Ah's.

"I came to speak with someone about the status of my father's contracts," Baek Ah says. "I would have expected to speak to Yo, but I was told to come to you."

He wasn't, but he wants to see the effect the lie has on Wook.

Wook doesn't so much as blink. "Times are changing," he says. The words slide like chess pieces, Baek Ah thinks. He himself has never cared for chess. "What troubles you about the contracts?"

"It was an agreement between my parents and Wang Taejo," Baek Ah explains, as though Wook doesn't already know. "When he…retires, they come up for renewal." The question he does not ask in words, but which hangs in the air nonetheless is: _would you renew them?_

Wook wags a finger. "Myung Hee was right about you," he says softly, and Baek Ah's blood rushes hot, so hot in his veins. "She always said that you were a gift to us all. I might say _a value_. Do not worry, Baek Ah."

Baek Ah thanks him—it is difficult to do it without clenching his teeth—and leaves.

 _iii._

At the end of the work day, Ha Jin goes home to see her mother. She tells her that she has found a new apartment, and a new job, and she will be too busy to be home for some time. Her mother takes the news hard, but she takes it.

Somehow, this hurts.

In half an hour, Ha Jin and a bag of clothes are standing in front of Baek Ah's home. She climbs the broad steps with her lower lip tucked between her teeth, because she does not _think_ anyone will make her leave here, but nor has anyone asked her to stay.

(Last night, So told her she could spend the night. He said it like it did not matter, but he also did not look her in the eyes. This, of all things, gave her hope.)

She tucks her things in a closet off the kitchen that seems unused and unimportant. Then she tiptoes down a lush-carpeted floor, as silently as she can, and comes to a heavy door. It rests slightly ajar; beyond it, voices.

"I'm…I'm sorry, _hyung_."

"No need to call me that," So answers. "Why are you sorry? You learned something valuable."

"What?" Baek Ah sounds baffled. "I mean, at first I thought I might learn which way the wind was blowing, but I already should have known. Wook is the wind. I showed my worry, visiting him at all, and he can probably see my plots better than I see them myself."

"You're not a plotter."

There is the clink of glass on glass; So is pouring himself a drink.

"What is the…" Baek Ah stumbles over the last word. " _Value_?"

"Yo," So answers shortly, "Would have laughed in your face. Wook didn't. Wook will use anyone. He has no pride."

"Because he's not a Wang," Baek Ah mumbles, but if it's loud enough for Ha Jin to hear, it's loud enough for So.

So doesn't exactly laugh, but he seems to come close. It warms Ha Jin, to think that he and Baek Ah have each other, here, too. "He's the farthest thing from a Wang," he agrees. "But it's no compliment, this time."

Ha Jin doesn't want to be spotted so she slips away to the kitchen, where one of them will find her and she can explain her plan to stay.

Once there, the thought she has feared so far springs to mind.

 _Wook will use anyone_.

Wook, given the chance, will be all too eager to use her.

 _iv._

"We should have foreseen this." Yoo smooths a lock of hair behind her ear. "Worms can grow into snakes, if they're not watched." She tilts her gaze at her eldest son again. "Why were you not watching him more closely?"

Yo bows. He only ever bows to her. " _Mian haeyo_."

"I don't want your apologies. I want action." Yoo hisses out a sigh through her teeth. "If the doctors are right, your father has weeks to live. Gwangjong can be yours, but you need control. Decisive control."

"Subject to his appointment?"

"Better that he appoints you than that it is left to the board." His mother's hatred of the company's board is no secret to Yo. "Who will he whisper words to but his own wife?" His mother smiles. "He is angry at Wook. _That_ will not be a hard story to sell. Mu is ruined. You are the one, Yo."

A little prickle of a thought has been teasing at Yo's mind of late. "What about So?" He knows even the mention of that name will make his mother angry, but he has to ask.

Her red lips twist. "So has nobody's trust, except for that weakling, Mu. Your father thinks of him like the trigger of a gun. Useful enough, if you want something killed."

Yo has a suspicion that their mother shares that belief. He does not say so.

"Double your deals," Yoo says. "You can go higher. If Taejo wakes up, I will promise him that you are prepared to provide for Jung—and even Mu. There will be no further need to derail shipments, with Mu gone. We no longer need the contrast with _his_ enterprises."

"I'll task the assistants with watching Wook." Yo stirs in his seat. The teacup in front of him is twice emptied. "If he has been preparing deals of his own, we take them over."

Yoo waves a hand. "That won't be enough." Her gaze dances over him like the graze of a knife-edge. "I will only ask you this once," she says. "Wook learned Mu's weakness and exposed it. Are you in the same danger?"

"No," Yo answers.

He is lying.

 _v._

So follows the sound of laughter. It is coming from the kitchen—Baek Ah's kitchen, which is always stocked with good things. Three times a day, cook-staff arrives to prepare meals. Supposedly the meals are for Baek Ah and Eun, but Jung and So share in them as well.

Not at the same time, of course. He and Jung continue to orbit each other uneasily, if at all.

He finds Jung in the kitchen, as luck (or un-luck) would have it. Beside him, across the table with her knees tucked up against her chest, is Ha Jin.

They are both laughing.

So knows jealousy like an old friend. He has few enough of those, of course—perhaps it had better be called something else, then. He is tightening his fists without knowing it, setting his jaw as if bracing for a blow.

Jung sees him and stops laughing. "So."

He shifts his gaze to Ha Jin, and does not address Jung. It makes him feel like his mother, to cast someone aside. There is no power in the gesture, though. Not for So. "You're still here?"

She chews her lip. Soft, pink. He wants her mouth, and he wants—

Shame, as familiar as jealousy and much better-earned, rolls over him. He'll be asking for more than his birthright, soon enough. He shouldn't ask for anything else.

"I thought I should stay here," Ha Jin says. "Not just…for a night. To be of better help to you."

He has still not gotten through to Soo-kyung. He doesn't know what Soo-kyung arranged for this girl, this spy. Perhaps So _was_ meant to look after her.

(Last night, he saw her as she slept. Again, it had shaken him. Again, it made him into something he is not. Something else, and not like jealousy.)

He shrugs, and turns away from her, from Jung, from the echo of their laughter. Why should he care for what makes her laugh? She has proven her usefulness, yes, and he trusts almost no one but he does not quite distrust her. That is enough for her to stay here.

It should also be enough for everything else, but instead So finds himself fleeing, returning to the better-known territory of violence and vengeance and the upward climb.

 _vi._

 _I'm sorry about your father_.

She shouldn't have sent that text. It lingers, read and un-replied to, and Yeon Hwa feels a twinge of embarrassment whenever she thinks of it. She should have known better than to expect Yo to be overly concerned about his family.

She always wants to believe better of him than she has a right to.

Truly, the text would have been better sent to So—but she doesn't have So's number anymore and it seems unlikely that So's relationship with his father is much warmer than Yo's is. It's better than his relationship with his mother, surely, but that is not saying much.

She tosses her phone aside. She felt only disgust when she watched Taejo rant, and no pity when she watched him fall. He is not her father.

Yeon Hwa's father is already dead.

Perhaps she should go to America. Istanbul. Paris. Somewhere where she won't have to worry about Wook climbing to the top of the empire that has already shunned them. Somewhere where she will stop dreaming of So and reaching for Yo.

She was never meant to be weak.

The next time everything changes, maybe she will change with it.

Or maybe she is already doomed.


End file.
